UN Climate Change Chief urges countries to push ahead

UN Climate Change Chief urges countries to push ahead with their work in 2011

(Bangkok, 8 April 2011) – On the final day of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bangkok (3-8 April), UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres urged countries to push ahead with their work to aim for another significant step in addressing global climate change in 2011.

During the week, positive discussions emerged under the Kyoto Protocol negotiating track, which addresses the emission reduction targets of developed countries.

"Discussions in Bangkok under the Kyoto Protocol importantly included not only a focus on what should happen with regard to the future of the protocol but also how it will happen," Ms. Figueres said. "It is significant that there is a strong desire to build on the Kyoto rules and a desire to find a political solution in 2011."

The rulebook of the Kyoto Protocol is the only current international set of accounting rules to protect environmental integrity while ensuring that a tonne of carbon removed from the atmosphere is a real tonne, no matter where it is removed or who removes it.

Picking up on the climate change agreements reached in Cancun at the end of last year, governments began organising their work for 2011, in Bangkok.

This also includes work under the Long-Term Cooperative Action (LCA) negotiating track of the Climate Change Convention, which brings all countries together to decide collective solutions to climate change.

Ms. Figueres said that while developed countries were mainly focused on addressing the implementation of the Cancun Agreements, developing countries wanted to ensure that those issues that were not resolved at Cancun yet are part of the comprehensive Bali Action Plan that governments agreed in of 2007 were dealt with in a balanced way.

The result of this year's work will culminate at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, at the end of the year.

"What is clear from this week is that in Durban, governments will address both the work to complete what was agreed in Cancun and the work which Cancun left unresolved,," said Ms Figueres.

The Bangkok meeting is officially the first week of a three-week session, which will resume in Bonn, Germany, on 6 June 2011.

Ms. Figueres pointed out that while Cancun was a signifricant step, meeting the long-term challenge of climate change required increasingly strong international agreements, backed by national policies that incentivised all sides to take aggressive and collective action on a global scale.

"The UNFCCC is the place where governments have committed to act together on climate change," she said. "At home, under their different political systems, they need to back up collective action with strong domestic policies,"she said.

The Bangkok meeting also included discussions to help bring clarity to countries' intentions in the shape of three workshops. One workshop included presentations on industrialised country emission reduction targets and the conditions for meeting them. Another workshop was held on developing country mitigation actions, looking at what these actions mean and what level of developed country support they might need to be implemented.*

An expert workshop on the Technology Mechanism, which was agreed in Cancun, also took place in Thailand, looking into practical issues, including what the network should look like, who should be included in it, and how to ensure the effective participation of relevant institutions.*

The UN Climate Change Conference in Bangkok has been attended by around two thousand participants from 175 countries, including government delegates, representatives from business and industry, environmental organisations and research institutions.

*An overview of government presentations given at mitigation and technology workshops can be found at:

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