The Historic UN Climate Change Conference Opened in Copenhagen
 

On Monday, December 7 in Bella Center, Copenhagen the 12 day UN Conference on Climate Change started. The Conference will be attended by negotiators from 192 countries, parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and will end with a summit of more than 110 heads of state or government on 17 and 18 December. The objective of the Conference is to adopt an ambitious and fair political agreement that blueprints the new climate change treaty. The success of this agreement will depend on two major factors – whether the rich countries and emerging economies will agree to deep cuts in their green-house emissions and whether the developed countries will guarantee enough funding to allow for immediate actions for adaptation and mitigation to take place in developing countries.

“A deal is within our reach,” the Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in his opening speech at the UN climate conference COP15 in Copenhagen. The agreement to be reached in Copenhagen during COP 15 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will incorporate the political decisions, and will provide the outline for the new climate treaty. The legal details of this treaty are to be further negotiated in 2010 so that finally it is ready to enter in force at the end of 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC spoke of three layers of action that governments must agree to by the end of the conference: fast and effective implementation of immediate action on climate change; ambitious commitments to cut and limit emissions, including start-up funding and a long-term funding commitment; and a long-term shared vision on a low-emissions future for all.

More than 110 heads of state or government - including US President Barack Obama, Premier Wen Jiabao of China, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the heads of the European Union (EU) - will come to Copenhagen on 17 and 18 of December in an attempt to seal a political global climate deal. The presence of leaders whose countries are the biggest green-house gas polluters is considered a sign for optimism.

The two-week meeting, the fifteenth Conference of the 193 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the fifth meeting of the 189 parties to the Kyoto Protocol, is the culmination of a process set in motion in Bali, where Parties to the UNFCCC agreed to conclude negotiations on a new global deal in Denmark in 2009.

Source: UNFCCC , COP 15 Copenhagen