Top UN climate change official calls for enhanced action after talks wrap up

While progress has been made in the latest round of international climate change negotiations, governments must now step up action on the issue if they are to reach a lasting deal later this year, a senior United Nations official said today.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that countries must “radically narrow down the choices on the table,” ahead of the next conference of parties in Cancun to be held in November.

In the Mexican city, “countries could agree to take accountable action to, for example, manage and deploy climate finance, boost technology transfer, build skills and capacity to do this and deal with adaptation, especially in the poorest and most vulnerable countries,” she noted.

Progress in Cancun, Ms. Figueres said, would also entail a mandate to move the process “inexorably forward towards an encompassing agreement with legally binding status, which would take more time.”

She called on governments to agree to further compromises at all levels between now and the November gathering. High-level meetings are scheduled in Geneva and New York next month, followed by the next UNFCCC negotiating session in Tianjin, China, in October.

“This week has given governments a final opportunity to be clear on their individual stances,” the UNFCCC head said. “Tianjin has to be the place where they make clear what their collective stance is going to be.”

Nearly 1,700 people from 175 countries took part in the week-long Bonn gathering, which wrapped up today.