“The pace of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations is far too slow. It’s like snails, moving snail’s pace,” Ban said at a high-level event on climate change referring to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations currently taking place in Bonn, ahead of the official 2015 climate change conference set to take place in Paris on Dec. 7-8.
The secretary-general urged world leaders to take responsibility for the outcomes of the world’s first truly global climate change negotiations.
The United Nations hopes that the international community will together deliver a new, ambitious and universally binding climate agreement in Paris by the end of this year.
“I really count on leaders, Presidents, Prime Ministers and Ministers to exercise their political direction so that this negotiation will move much faster,” Ban said.
Echoing Ban’s remarks, Xie Zhenhua, China’s special representative on climate change, who also spoke at the high-level meeting here, said “There is very little time between now and the Paris conference.”
“It is crucial that all parties submit their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) and strengthen the implementation in accordance with their international obligations undertaken in the convention,” Xie said.
As of Monday, only 39 countries—of the 196 parties to the convention—have submitted their INDCs, according to the UNFCCC website.
“Our experiences together with events elsewhere clearly indicate that climate change is not an event in the future, but an event that is already taking place,” Anote Tong, the president of Kiribati, said. “It is happening now.”
Tong said that recently there had been a “glimmer of hope” that climate change dialogue was shifting, but that it is critical “to move from the acknowledgment of climate change as a challenge to doing something about it.”
For his part, Harald Braun, the permanent representative of Germany to the United Nations, underscored Ban’s call for negotiations to move faster. “We have to speed up—we have to become faster—we are still on the snail track but we need to be the antelope.”
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the minister of the environment of Peru, said that optimism was needed despite the failures of earlier conferences.
“We have already run most of the marathon, most of the race, we are very close to the goal so this is the time in which we should put more effort and more dedication,” Pulgar-Vidal said.
“After the failure of Copenhagen in 2009 and through Cancun, Durban, Doha, Warsaw, Lima we have already done a lot,” Pulgar-Vidal said referring to the last six climate change conferences. “We have step by step begun to work the structure of the agreement so this is time in which we should put all the pieces together.”
At the same time, Ban also provided positive examples of progress made on climate change worldwide.
“Since 2009, the number of number of national climate laws and policies has nearly doubled, with three-quarters of the world’s annual emissions now covered by national targets,” Ban said.
“The world’s three biggest economies—China, the European Union and the United States—have placed their bets on low- carbon, climate-resilient growth,” Ban said.
Ban also said that more renewable energy is being used and that the price of renewable energy is falling dramatically.
“The world is now using more renewable electric power each year than it is from coal, natural gas and oil put together,” Ban said.
Highlighting China’s effort in this regard, Xie said: “China’s carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP reduced by 33.8 percent in 2014 as compared with that of 2005.”
“At present China’s installed power capacity from renewable energy counts for 24 percent of the world total,” he said.
Source: Manila Bulletin | 01 July 2015
