The Start of the Climate Change Conference, Bangkok
6th April 2011 by Madlen King
The latest sessions of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperation under the Convention (AWG-LCA), as well as workshops relating to the Cancun Agreements, started on Sunday 3 April and will run through to Friday 8 April in Bangkok.
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, welcomed the participants and urged the participants ‘to push ahead to complete the work they agreed to in Cancun, and to chart a way forward that will ensure renewed success in Durban’. The Executive Secretary acknowledged that whilst countries had proposed their national plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ‘the sum of these efforts still falls short of the required, long-term effort’ – at approximately 60% of what is required to ensure global average temperature rise does not exceed 2 degrees.
Figueres called for the need to resolve the fundamental issue of the future of the Kyoto Protocol and recognised that at the end of the first commitment period in 2012 a commitment gap now ‘looks increasingly impossible to avoid’. Thus the need to ensure that the broader global climate regime, put forward in Cancun, is functioning and effective in 2012.
The AWG KP will meet today and their discussions will address those questions raised by the Chair: How do the decisions adopted in Cancun contribute to reaching an agreement on the second commitment period? What is a practical way forward to achieve clarity on the conversion of pledges to quantified economy-wide limitation or reduction commitments? What steps are needed to raise the level of ambition in the targets proposed by Annex I Parties? What can help to resolve the question of whether commitments or rules should come first? And what objectives could be achieved through introducing quantified limits on the use of the flexible mechanisms?
Madlen King is the Global Head of Climate Change & Sustainability. She ensures the technical integrity of LRQA climate change and sustainability services and liaises with external bodies and governments on climate change. Within this role, Madlen is responsible for the service design, delivery and maintenance of accreditations for all GHG validation and verification schemes [...]