Mexico ready to round off Copenhagen process
Next month’s global climate change conference in the Danish capital should yield a concrete base that will allow for a definitive treaty to be agreed within a year, Mexico’s top climate change diplomat says.
World leaders will probably not be able to draw up a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol at December’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen.
However, Mexico’s top climate change diplomat believes the meeting will yield significant results including an accord to cap rising temperatures and pledges for billions of dollars to help poor countries cope with climate change.
“What is important is that in Copenhagen we say what it is we want, and afterward the ‘how.’ If we decide what the goal is, the terms of the negotiations that follow will be easier,” says Luis Alfonso de Alba according to Reuters.
Denmark has proposed that the world delay a final legal agreement until 2010. Instead, countries should try to reach a “binding” political deal at the December meeting.
According to de Alba, the Copenhagen agreement must at least include a commitment to prevent the earth’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and a binding commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least half by 2050, with at least 80 percent of the reduction coming from developed nation.
If these targets are agreed, negotiators should be able to arrive at a final binding treaty by the end of 2010 at a meeting that Mexico is likely to host, he says.
“What is most probable is that this work finishes in Mexico. What is clear is that it must not end after Mexico. It ends either before or at the Mexico meeting.”
