No progress made at Climate Chang conference - Osafo

From Albert Oppong Ansah, GNA Special Correspondent, Cancun, Mexico

Cancun, Mexico, Dec. 5, GNA - Although lots of discussions and negotiations have been going on since the commencement of the 16th section of the Conference of Parties (COP) on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, there had not been any progress.

Dr Seth Osafo, Legal Advisor to the African Group of Negotiators of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said the Adhoc Working Group on Long-range Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and Adhoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol for further commitment on the Annex one parties (AWG-KP) had been working rigorously, yet there had not been any progress.

The groups on Cooperative Action and Kyoto-Protocol are groups from different countries working on various components of the UNFCCC. Annex one Parties discuss the further commitment of the developed

countries. Dr Osafo was speaking to the Ghana News Agency at the end of

week one of the on-going Climate Change conference in Canc=FAn,

Mexico. He said the developed countries had deliberately refused to come

up with the adequate numbers that were required to amend the AWG-

KP. "For a number of months now we have been trying to get them to

come out clearly with emission reduction target but they keep

delaying," he said. Dr Osafo noted that within the Cooperative Action Group, the

developed countries had maintained their pledge at the 15th section of

COP in Copenhagen but these were inadequate. "The commitment of 30 billion US dollars to the developing world

over the next three years, rising to 100 billion dollars per year by 2020= ,

was woefully inadequate to take care of climate change and its related

problems globally. "To make matters worse Japan early this week came out to say that

she will not be party to the second commitment period of the AWG-

KP. This is a big blow to the conference and appears to have dumped

the hopes of the developing countries," he said. He said under the Bali Action Plan (BAP) of the AWG-KP, there

was no particular area that progress had been made, adding that the

Chair of the UNFCCC, Ms Christiana Figueres, had taken the initiative

to deliberate with some key countries on certain components of BAP. This include mitigation action plan which was crucial to developing

countries. The Bali Action Plan is an international strategy that talks about t= he

support in the area of climate change financing, adaptation and

mitigating actions into sectoral and national programmes. He expressed the hope that a meaningful agreement would be

reached once the ministerial section started at the second week of the

conference and that failure would be a big blow to the multinational

negotiations.