Agreements between countries are strengthened
The UN climate conference held last week in Vienna finally bound industrialized nations to accept a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases by at least 25%. The Environment News Service reports that the talks among the 158 nations that were present showed a positive response to the climate problem. The talks have made way for the summit in December in Bali, which we hope will determine the future of the global carbon trade and financing action against climate change.
“This is a first step that has laid the groundwork for the Bali Conference,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC. “It shows that Parties have the necessary level of ambition to move this work forward.”
“The scale of the climate change problem is clear, the technology is available, and solutions are financially affordable,” said de Boer at a concluding news conference.
De Boer said delegates reached consensus “that the response needs to be global, with the involvement of all countries, and that it needs to give equal importance to adaptation and mitigation.”
Environmentalists were generally supportive of the proposed target.