U.N. climate chief: Talk of delayed climate deal ‘unhelpful’ 1

POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 5, 2008 (AFP) -- The U.N. climate chief said Friday that talk of pushing a global climate change deal past the December 2009 deadline agreed upon at U.N. talks in Bali last year was not on the table.

"I find that kind of thinking is neither helpful nor necessary," Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said half way through two-week international negotiations in Poznan, Poland.

Some experts have suggested that a lame-duck administration in Washington and the global economic crisis may have put the already ambitious goal of hammering out a global climate change agreement by December 2009 out of reach.

"There was a broad international commitment in Bali -- including from the Bush administration -- that we are working towards an outcome in Copenhagen," de Boer said, referring to the Danish capital that will host the critical round of U.N. negotiations. "I have no indication whatsoever that president-elect Obama wants to go back on what President Bush agreed to in Bali."

But Obama is represented only by observers in Poznan, where the U.S. delegation is led by members of the outgoing administration of George W. Bush.

In a press conference in Poznan, de Boer also took a swipe at a U.S.-based think tank cited in a question as raising doubts about how realistic the U.N. goal was.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change "are about the only ones I've heard saying that a deal for Copenhagen is not viable," he said. A draft study by an analyst on the Center's website states that "a detailed post-2012 agreement is unlikely when governments meet in late 2009 in Copenhagen."

The Bali "road map" laid out at the end of marathon negotiations last year set December 2009 as the deadline for a new climate deal that will kick in after the first round of rich-nation commitments under the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The Bush administration has been hostile to all efforts to impose binding agreement on emissions reductions unless rapidly developing nations such as China and India took on commitments too.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

• Comments