4 October 2011 | Linton Nightingale
Climate Change, COP17, South America

 

The last formal negotiating session before COP 17 is taking place in Panama from October 1st - 7th.

Governments recognise that they need to speed up and scale up their efforts to combat climate change, claims the UN’s climate change chief.

Speaking ahead of the last formal negotiating session in Panama (October 1st - 7th) before COP 17, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), commented that world leaders were readying themselves for “the next chapter of the global climate regime.”

“They have recognized very clearly that the current level of effort is not enough and they have realized that it is important to increase both the level of emission controls on greenhouse gases as well as the capacity of countries to adapt to climate change,” said Ms. Figueres.

“Governments know that the best way to have a successful Durban is to arrive there with draft decision texts and I see a lot of support for that approach. They can leave Panama with a clearer idea of what they would be able to agree in Durban,” added Figueres.

The negotiations in Panama followed on from the successful 2010 UN Conference in the Mexican city of Cancun, which produced the Cancun Agreements. Figueres outlined the next steps in the international climate change process in terms of those issues which were already agreed in Cancun, have been under design and will be ready for Durban to move them further forward, and those issues which were not fully solved in Cancun and need new decisions to progress.

Ms. Figueres listed four key elements agreed in Cancun. Firstly she noted that the introduction of three new climate institutions, designed to aid developing nations in all aspects of mitigating climate change, was well advanced. She added that work by committees appointed to design the new Green Climate Fund (GCF) and establish the new Technology Mechanism was well on the way to being approved in Durban. The Adaptation Committee is also being worked on further in Panama, which is being designed to give international coherence to the adaptation efforts of developing countries, the UN chief confirmed.

In Panama, Ms. Figueres also expected governments to focus on their agreement to strengthen the systems that measure, report and verify the climate efforts of all countries to ensure international accountability and transparency.

Turning to those issues that were left unresolved in Cancun, Ms. Figueres said it was most important that governments this year decide two critical questions over the future of the Kyoto Protocol and the future of the broader climate regime going forward.

“Governments can decide what they want to do over the future of the Kyoto Protocol and, in particular, how they would like to address the protocol’s second commitment period. This would involve the question of deeper emission reduction commitments of industrial countries under the Kyoto Protocol and the question of how to go forward with the current emission pledges of the US and developing countries which are currently not under the protocol,” said the Executive Secretary.

Ms. Figueres said that governments over the past few months had been thinking very seriously about both issues and were now grappling both with the future form and deadlines they would need to achieve their agreed goal of keeping the global average temperature rise at least below two degrees celsius.

“As a bridge between two oceans and two continents, Panama is a good place to identify where governments positions connect in order to advance towards Durban on a firm footing”, Ms. Figueres concluded.

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