UN Chief asks to implement key elements of Copenhagen accord

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during a prayer service in Haiti. The UN Chief had asked the world to implement the key elements of the Copenhagen Accord. File Photo: AP

Underlining the need to move beyond the procedural controversies of Copenhagen Accord, UN Chief Ban Ki-moon has asked the world to implement the key elements of the document.

Referring to a non-binding document that was drafted on December 18 by a small group of countries including the BASIC nations (China, India, Brazil and South Africa), Mr. Ban said: “It is important that we have to follow-up and implement what has been agreed in Copenhagen.”

“There are two very important elements which we have to implement,” He said.

The first, the head of the UN, noted is to have the financial flow of fast-start fund of USD 10 billion for the next three years.

“I am intending to establish soon a high level advisory group on it,” he said.

The second element is for states to announce their mitigation targets.

“We will continue to have some negotiations, so that we will be able to have a legally binding treaty at the Conference in Mexico,” Mr. Ban said.

“That is an absolutely important, crucially important, task which we have to fulfil.”

Deep divisions at the Copenhagen conference led to a compromise in which states were asked to “associate’ themselves with the Accord.

The Copenhagen Accord that was produced by 29 countries, principally drafted by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, in the last few hours of the Copenhagen Conference.

Key elements of the Accord included a limit 2 degree rise of global temperature, the percentage of mitigations cuts were not given.

A total of USD 30 billion was pledged from 2010-2012 to help poor countries in the firing line of climate change, and rich nations sketched a target of providing USD 100 billion annually by 2020.

The document was slammed by certain countries including Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba for having left the majority of the nations out of the negotiating process.

Its present status remains dubious as many nations have taken a view that it cannot form the basis of future climate talks.

Its principle drafters have yet to accept the accord.

According to the UN, the Copenhagen Accord has been accepted by nine states Australia, France, Canada, Singapore, Turkey, Papua New Guinea, Serbia, Ghana and the Maldives.

Meanwhile, Bolivia is organising alternative international climate talks in the city of Cochabamba in April.