The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poland late last year constituted the halfway mark in the negotiations on an ambitious and effective international response to climate change.

Conference President and Polish Minister of the Environment Maciej Nowicki said delegates had agreed on the work program for 2009 and had “cleared the decks of many technical issues”.

“Poznan is the place where the partnership between the developing and developed world to fight climate change has shifted beyond rhetoric and turned into real action,” he said.

Negotiating an agreement

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At the conference, the finishing touches were put on the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), enabling the fund to receive projects in 2009. Parties agreed that the fund would have a legal capacity granting developing countries direct access.

Countries meeting in Poznan made progress on a number of issues that will be important up to 2012 — particularly for developing countries — including adaptation, finance, technology and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Participants also discussed disaster management, risk assessment and insurance.

Governments agreed that commitments of industrialised countries post-2012 should principally take the form of quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives.

The Poznan conference ended with a clear commitment from governments to shift into full negotiating mode in order to shape an ambitious and effective international response to climate change, to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

Towards Copenhagen

Speaking at the Delhi Sustainable Summit in February, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer put significant emphasis on the progress needed at the Copenhagen summit in December this year to set in motion a green revolution.

“Copenhagen 2009 has an important role to play in the global economy by further strengthening and extending the opportunities inherent in ‘going green’,” he said. “It needs to further strengthen the current opportunity for a global green revolution. In this context, it needs to support building up a more inclusive, green pattern of globalisation.

“Critically, Copenhagen needs to turn developing country mitigation actions into something that both serves and boosts their long-term economic development goals.”