UN drops deadline for countries to state climate change targets

Executive COP15
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Courtesy of guardian.co.uk

The UN has dropped the 31 January deadline by which time all countries were expected to officially state their emission reduction targets or list the actions they planned to take to counter climate change.

Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month's fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a "soft" deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. "I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].

"I see the accord as a living document that tracks actions that countries want to take," he told journalists in Bonn.

"It's a soft deadline. Countries are not being asked to sign the accord to take on legally binding targets, only to indicate their intention," he said.

The deadline was intended to be the first test of the "Copenhagen accord", the weak, three-page document that emerged at the end of the summit, and which fell far short of original expectations. It seeks to bind all countries to a goal of limiting warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial times and proposes that $100bn a year be provided for poor countries to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change after 2020.

But with just 10 days to go, only 20 countries out of 192 have signed up, with many clearly unready or unwilling to put their name to the document. Countries which have signed so far include India, Russia, Mexico, Australia, France and Norway.

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"I think it is imperative that the countries that are the biggest polluters must sign up to show their solidarity in cutting emissions, thereby showing the smaller underdeveloped countries that they have their backs and will help them to also cut emissions. By not adhearing to the so called "soft deadline", it is only allowing the largest most contributing countries to continue to pass the buck and not do anything at all to help squash the problem. We cant continue to go on setting deadlines and then not abiding by them for whatever reason, or our planet is going to be in more of a crisis then it already is. Species are going to disappear and eventually our own human race will be gone. I just don't know what people are thinking or should I say, not thinking? The so-called super powers have got to take the lead on this or else the smaller countries don't stand a chance. The rest of the world looks to all of us to show them the way and if we falter, then the whole world falters."

By: candeeb :: 2 years ago