UN agrees to host two more rounds of climate change talks before summit in Mexico

Climate change talks underway in Bonn, Germany

12 April 2010 – Participants at the United Nations climate change talks in Bonn have agreed to intensify their negotiating schedule in hopes of reaching a strong outcome in Mexico later this year after world leaders were unable to agree on a binding treaty in Copenhagen last December.

“At this meeting in Bonn, I have generally seen a strong desire to make progress,” said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), following the talks over the weekend in Germany.

He cautioned, however, that while additional “meeting time is important, it is itself not a recipe for success.”

In addition to the negotiating sessions already scheduled for 2010, governments of the 175 countries that participated decided to hold two additional sessions of at least one week each to intensify the search for ways to limit carbon emissions and provide assistance for developing countries.

Dates have not yet been set, but the additional meetings will take place between 11 June, when the UNFCCC Convention subsidiary bodies wrap up their session, and 29 November when the UN Climate Change Conference will begin in Cancun, Mexico.

“The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun must do what Copenhagen did not achieve: It must finalize a functioning architecture for implementation that launches global climate action, across the board, especially in developing nations,” said Mr. de Boer.

The end result of the previous climate change conference held in Denmark in December 2009 was the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding document which has now been signed by at least 117 countries.

Mr. de Boer stressed that negotiations this year need to finalize mitigation targets and action, a package on adaptation, a new technology mechanism, financial agreements, ways to deal with deforestation, and a capacity-building framework.