CLIMATE TALKS END

The Accra Climate Change Talks 2008 has ended with renewed international resolve to intensify the pace of negotiations on climate change.
The Executive Director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Mr Yvo de Boer, who addressed a closing press conference, described the meeting as successful.
He said the Accra meeting had been a “very important and encouraging meeting” and had provided concrete proposals on several issues.
Mr Yvo de Boer said concrete proposals had been made on financing the means by which developing countries could cope better with climate change while following a sustainable development path.
He said the highlight of the meeting was the agreement by governments to compile all the proposals into one text for the next meeting on climate change in Poznan, Poland, in December this year.
The proposals on stepping up action on reducing greenhouse emissions and better coping measures to the impacts of climate change, particularly by developing nations, would be the first concrete negotiating text to work with on the road to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, Mr de Boer said
“So Accra has laid the foundation of what could serve as a first negotiating text for a Copenhagen deal,” he said.
At Copenhagen governments will agree on concrete proposals on climate change.
The chairpersons of the two working groups at the Accra Climate Change Talks, Messrs Luiz Figuieredo Machado and Harald Dovland, who also addressed the press conference, said they had made progress in their discussions.
Mr Machado — who chaired a working group that focused on four key issues set out in Bali, that is, better coping mechanisms to climate change, lessening the impact of climate change, technology and financing — said several proposals for solutions had been made.
He said governments had discussed at length what was needed to strengthen individual countries’ abilities to cope with climate change and reduce greenhouse emissions.
Mr Dovland, the chair of the group on the Kyoto Protocol that focused on emission reduction targets, also reported that progress had been made by parties on ambitious emission reduction targets.
He said despite the economic and political complexities in negotiating on that point, positive steps had been taken on the road to Poznan.

DAILY GRAPHIC, SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 2008, PG 17