Latest UN climate change talks end with calls for speedier negotiations

The latest round of United Nations-sponsored global climate change talks ended today in Bonn, Germany, with calls to step up the pace of negotiations in the run up to next year’s crucial summit in Copenhagen.

“We now have a clearer understanding among governments on what countries would ultimately like to see written into a long-term agreement to address climate change,” said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “But with a little more than a year to go to Copenhagen, the challenge to come to that agreement remains daunting,” he added.

The talks, which brought together participants from 170 countries, led, among other things, to an agreement that practical technology transfer efforts would be scaled up – in particular for Africa, small island developing States and least developed countries.

“What is ultimately required is a clever financial architecture to generate the money developing countries will need to green their economies and adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change,” Mr. de Boer said.

Two further rounds of UN-sponsored negotiations will take place this year in Ghana and Poland.

A further series of major UNFCCC negotiating sessions are planned for 2009, culminating at the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The aim of the negotiations is to create a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, with first-round commitments ending in 2012, on greenhouse gas emissions reduction.