Secretary-General to attend next round of UN climate talks in Poland

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend the next round of United Nations climate change talks which kick off in Poznan, Poland, next month, it was announced today.

At the start of the high-level portion of the two-week meeting, Mr. Ban will lay out his ideas for some key issues under negotiation, including the shared vision necessary for long-term world collaboration on climate change.

“He will continue to call on countries not to abandon their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions because of the global financial crisis, but rather to make use of solutions that will address both, such as public investments in alternative, low-carbon energy systems,” Michele Montas, his spokesperson, told reporters in New York.

At the Poznan meeting which runs from 1-12 December, the Secretary-General will also convey to participants the readiness of the UN system to support governments implement both existing and future agreements.

UN-backed talks to reach agreement on a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period ends in 2012, began last December in Bali, where 187 countries agreed on the so-called “Bali Roadmap” – including bolstered action on mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance – to tackle climate change.

The two-year negotiations are scheduled to conclude next December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Without effective action, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-recipient of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has warned of a 4-degree Celsius surge in average global temperatures this century, far surpassing the 0.8-degree Celsius rise in the twentieth century.