Brussels, 26/08/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 25 August, François Hollande, the Chairman of the COP 21 summit (30 November-11 December) said that he had been encouraged by the “positive signals” received on the trajectory towards the Paris meeting and informed all French ambassadors that “the most difficult thing is yet to come, namely the agreement itself”.
The president expressed his concern about the sluggish progress and said that France and its diplomatic corps would do everything possible to help conclude a global climate agreement, whose very life would depend on the funding it received.
The president warned “We are duty bound to succeed because it is a global challenge and because France is the host country for this meeting”. Given the number of encouraging positive signals, such as the “courageous US plan” to reduce emissions from US electricity plants, “the serious contribution made by China” and the awareness that has been raised, the “tighter” draft text “will help the technical negotiations in Bonn (31 August-4 September). Nonetheless, this is not enough”.
François Hollande said that they would “move forward but the most difficult thing is yet to come, namely the agreement itself. We therefore have to speed up”. He announced that he would be travelling to Beijing in November to work with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to help advance things and to Seoul in South Korea, where the Green Climate Fund is based, “because we know that the question of financing will be essential”. $100 billion a year was promised by the international community in 2009 at Copenhagen (COP 15) to help support the efforts made by developing countries as from 2020. This promise needs to be kept to reassure the most vulnerable countries regarding climate change.
The President called on all countries to submit their national contributions to the future agreement as soon as possible. So far, only 56 countries have done so. He also welcomed the initiative by the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, to organise a meeting of Heads of State and Government, in a backdrop to the UN General Assembly on 27 September in New York. This meeting at the summit will be co-chaired by the UN, France and Peru and is expected to help “mobilise the different forces and provide the necessary boost to set out an ambitious global level and the appropriate means to achieve it”, explained Hollande.
The French President confirmed his intention to invite Heads of State and Government from the whole world to take part in the first few days of the COP 21. He explained that “I thought that the best thing to do would be to invite the Heads of State and Government throughout the beginning of the conference and not at the end. By the end, it is sometimes too late and even their invocations are no longer enough to convince and reach a conclusion. This is the experience that we drew from the failure of Copenhagen”. At the time, the Heads of State and Government were involved in bitter negotiations during the whole of the COP 15 and failed to reach an agreement and despite its goal, the European Union was effectively marginalised by the US and China. This time, the French President wants the Heads of State and Government to provide the negotiators with “a political boost and clear mandate to reach a conclusion”. (Aminata Niang)