UN Gathers World Leaders for Climate Conclave

NEW YORK, New York, September 24, 2007 (ENS) - National leaders from across the world are gathering at United Nations Headquarters in New York today for the largest ever high level meeting on climate change. The talks are expected to produce a strong call for action to address the planet's rising temperature that threatens higher sea levels, water scarcity, extreme weather patterns, a wave of extinctions, and the spread of tropical diseases.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened the brainstorming session of more than 80 heads of state and government with a view to increasing the political will to limit the emission of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of coal, oil and gas.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Photo by Evan Schneider courtesy UN)

Leaders will have their eyes on the annual UN climate conference this December in Bali, Indonesia. There, governments will begin to negotiate a global climate treaty covering the period after the current framework - the Kyoto Protocol - expires in 2012.

The most senior UN climate official says that today's climate meeting "is a sign of the growing consensus that the international community needs to act on climate change."

Senior UN climate official Yvo de Boer briefs reporters Saturday at the UN. (Photo by Paulo Filgueiras courtesy UN)

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said Saturday that the Bali conference must respond to the conclusions of the expert Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, which has predicted an increase in climate-change related impacts, such as changes in temperature and rainfall, increasing sea level and more frequent droughts, floods and other extreme weather events.

But the Bali meeting, he said, "cannot get to that point without the support of heads of state and government that will be gathering here on Monday."

He voiced confidence that the Secretary-General's initiative "will serve that purpose" and expressed hope that the meeting would produce "a clear call from heads of state and government for real negotiations to begin in Bali in December with a view to completing them in 2009."

In an unprecedented agreement Friday, industrialized and developing countries decided to accelerate the phaseout of coolant chemicals that are harmful to the ozone layer and also are a cause of global climate warming.

Representatives of 191 countries that are Parties to the Montreal Proctol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer agreed unanimously to accelerate phaseouts of hydrochlorofluorocarbons from 2009.

Jindal Steel and Power plant in India's Chhattisgarh state. (Photo courtesy Jindal Steel and Power)

The Secretary-General has said that a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol must be ready for ratification three years before its expiration in 2012 to allow countries to make it law in time.

A breakthrough in Bali, said de Boer, "is absolutely essential."

"What is needed above all right now is U.S. leadership, for no country bears greater responsibility for climate change, nor has greater capacity to catalyze a global response," say Eileen Claussen and Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, writing in the spring issue of the "Harvard International Review."

As the Bush administration draws to a close, U.S. politics are beginning to favor real climate action, they note, with the recent Democratic takeover of Congress and the action of individual states and regional compacts on setting greeenhouse gas emissions limits.

Allegheny Energy's Harrison coal-fired power plant in West Virginia, a coal-producing state. (Photo courtesy Allegheny Energy)

"The European Union's regional trading system and Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism (which grants developing countries tradable emission credits for reductions they achieve) have generated over US$30 billion in greenhouse gas trades since their launch in 2005," say Claussen and Diringer, money the World Bank says can be used to generate the multi-billion dollar investments needed to drive down emissions in rapidly developing countries.

"With the enactment of mandatory U.S. measures probably occurring no later than 2010, the global politics of climate change will be thoroughly transformed. Having resolved what it will do at home, the United States will know far better what it can commit to abroad, Claussen and Diringer say. "To avoid losing competitive advantage to countries without emission controls, the United States will have a strong incentive to rejoin and strengthen the global climate effort."

Meanwhile, as world leaders and dignitaries arrive in New York for the United Nations General Assembly meetings, the government of India is giving the city an Indian complexion. Unveiling a global marketing drive in Manhattan with its Incredible India@ 60 campaign, India is celebrating its 60th anniversary of independence from British rule this year.

The four-day celebration, which opened Sunday, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Indian Ministry of Tourism, will see India taking over public places to showcase Bollywood stars, traditional dances, regional food, fashion shows and business conferences.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.