Hon Tim Groser

Minister Responsible for International Climate Change Negotiations

1 December 2010

Media Statement

Groser to play key role in UN climate change conference

Minister for International Climate Change Negotiations, Tim Groser, will travel to Cancun, Mexico, from December 1-14 to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s annual conference. This will be the first full meeting at Ministerial level since the Copenhagen Climate Change meeting in December last year.

At Cancun, Mr Groser will play a key role in the negotiations as a facilitator on the issues of mitigation and measurement, reporting and verification.

“These are highly technical issues but a gateway to any positive result from the Cancun meeting. In plain language the issue is to find agreed ways to measure individual countries’ efforts to reduce their emissions, to allow an informed debate about how these efforts can be compared with each other and to enable countries to verify whether their commitments are indeed being met. Agreement on this point is central to any deal at Cancun,” said Mr Groser.

Following last year’s challenging climate change conference in Copenhagen, states will be working together at Cancun to re-gather momentum and consolidate progress in the negotiations.

“New Zealand will seek a balanced package of decisions at Cancun towards an effective, legally-binding, global agreement on climate change, building on the political understandings in the Copenhagen Accord,” said Mr Groser.

“It is important that we demonstrate substantive progress at Cancun, and send a message that there is still strong political leadership of the international climate change negotiations”.

ENDS

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