Brussels, 06/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - Progress has been made in the clarification of technical details but, given that there are no more ambitious commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, no major breakthrough was made in Bangkok, where the informal session of UN climate talks in preparation for the Doha conference (COP 18 November-December) ended on Wednesday 5 September. Nonetheless, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that “government negotiators have pushed forward key issues further than many had expected and raised the prospects for a next successful step in Doha”. Connie Hedegaard, Commissioner for Climate Action, was also pleased with what was achieved in Bangkok. “A constructive mood, some progress. That's the spirit we need before Doha and the new agreement in 2015”, she tweeted. Environmental NGOs temper that optimism however, saying, as does Greenpeace International, that talks are getting bogged down in petty politics. Bill Hare of Climate Analytics sounds a note of caution, saying: “If governments take no further action beyond current pledges within the context of the UN climate ,process, the global mean temperature will increase by as much as 2.6-4.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100”.
The Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex 1 Parties under the Kyoto Protocol has outlined in an unofficial paper the elements of a final decision with a view to producing a negotiating text sufficiently early ahead of the COP 18 to allow for further work in national capitals before coming to Doha. It has also set out in detail what must be done to overcome the differences of opinion regarding the duration of the second period of Kyoto Protocol commitments.
The Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action has an objective to close its work in Doha, and has made headway in its reflection on new market mechanisms likely to promote international cooperation.
The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which is to prepare the ground for talks on a global climate agreement to be adopted in 2015 with entry into effect in 2020, has allowed preliminary discussion to take place on the vision that the different countries of the future global agreement have and on the identification of action needed ahead of 2020 to keep the rise in temperature at the world's surface below 2° Celsius. (AN/transl.jl)