A global,comprehensive and legally-binding agreement on climate change that was expected to have been finalised in Copenhagen in December last year is unlikely to be delivered in the next climate change conference as well.
The outgoing head of the UN climate body,Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),Yvo de Boer said on Tuesday night that it was unrealistic to expect that the next Conference of Parties (CoP) as the annual climate change conference is called to be held in Mexico in November-December this year,would be able to produce a legally-binding agreement. He said such a full-fledged treaty would probably have to wait another year,till the next CoP in South Africa in 2011.
I think it is extremely unlikely that we will see a legally-binding agreement in Cancun (Mexico). I think especially developing countries would want to see what an agreement would entail for them before they would be willing to turn it into a legally-binding treaty. So I think if we are to get to a treaty,South Africa a year later is much more realistic, de Boer said in a teleconference with journalists.
Countries are negotiating a global legally-binding agreement to deal with climate change impact. As of now,the only international arrangement to address this problem,believed to be caused by the continuing rise in greenhouse gas emissions,is the Kyoto Protocol,which makes it obligatory for a group of rich countries to reduce their emissions to a mutually agreed level. The mandate of the Protocol runs only till 2012 unless extended by consensus.
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