New timetable: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore speaks during the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poznan on December 12, 2008.
Credit: AFP
POZNAN: A global forum on climate change has hammered out a work schedule designed to end in a treaty for expunging the increasing threat mankind faces from greenhouse gases.
In the pre-dawn hours on Saturday, the 192-member U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) set down a program of work that, it declared, would conclude with a historic pact in Copenhagen next December.
Taking effect after 2012, the deal will set down unprecedented measures for curbing emissions of heat-trapping carbon gases and helping poor countries in the firing line of climate change.
From rhetoric to action?
"Poznan is the place where the partnership between the developing and developed world to fight climate change has shifted beyond rhetoric and turned into real action," said Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, who chaired the marathon talks.
UNFCCC members will submit proposals for the treaty's text in the early months of 2009. By June, these will then be condensed from what is likely to be a massive document into a blueprint for negotiations.
Friday's agreement sets the stage for a year-long process revolving around two big issues: who should make the biggest sacrifices on curbing greenhouse gases, and how to beef up support for poor countries exposed to climate change.
The 12-day meeting ended with a two-day ministerial-level gathering that, despite flourishes of rhetoric, failed to make any big advance on these core issues.
Adaptation fund
It opened the way to launching a so-called Adaptation Fund for helping poor countries that are most exposed to rising sea levels, drought and floods.
But it yielded no accord on how to boost its coffers to the scale of billions of dollars per year – a level that many experts say will be needed, just a few decades from now.
But the arduous process was given a boost in morale by the adoption at a European Union (EU) summit in Brussels of a deal to slash EU emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
Delegates in Poznan had held their breath, fearful that backsliding by the EU would fatally sap momentum in the U.N. track.
