U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed confidence that governments will reach an agreement on climate change next month, a senior U.N. official said.
“The Secretary-General is confident that governments will reach agreements in Copenhagen on the fundamental issues that will form the substance of a legally binding international agreement, which is the end goal for guiding action on climate change,” Janos Pasztor, who heads Mr. Ban’s Climate Change Support Team, told reporters here.
Mr. Pasztor underlined that Mr. Ban had been speaking with world leaders on a regular basis and remained optimistic.
“Everybody wants to have a deal in Copenhagen... while we’re not quite yet there the willingness is there to make it happen,” the U.N. official said.
“It is not a question of whether or not we’re going to have a deal. It’s a question of how we are going to make sure that we will get a good deal in Copenhagen,” he added.
Mr. Ban will be in Washington on Tuesday to meet White House officials and Senators to tell them what is expected from the U.S., according to Mr. Pasztor.
The U.S. position in Copenhagen depends largely on the treatment of the domestic Climate Change Bill, which is pending in the Senate.
“The purpose is to inform what is happening in the international negotiations, what is happening in terms of what countries are doing globally. These are very useful piece of information to transmit to decision makers in Washington,” he said.
The nations are required to limit the rise in earth’s average temperature to less than 2°C. U.N. scientists have underlined the need for aggregate emission reduction by industrialised countries of between minus 25 per cent and 40 per cent over 1990 levels, by 2020 with global emissions falling by at least 50 per cent by 2050.
Even under this scenario, there would be only 50 per cent chance of avoiding the most catastrophic consequences, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Around 192 countries that will meet in the Danish capital are expected to hammer out a climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol since the first commitment period under this treaty ends in 2012.
At the negotiations in Barcelona very little progress was made on two key Climate Change issues — mid term emission reduction targets of developed countries and a concrete plan for financing developing countries to limit their emissions and adaptation efforts.
“Without these two pieces of the puzzle in place, we will not have a deal in Copenhagen. So leadership at the highest level is required to unlock the pieces,” Yvo de Boer, U.N. Climate Change chief had earlier said.
