Copenhagen summit urged to take climate change action
December 7, 2009
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has described the UN climate summit in Copenhagen as an "opportunity the world cannot afford to miss".
Opening the two-week conference in the Danish capital, he told delegates from 192 countries a "strong and ambitious climate change agreement" was needed.
About 100 leaders are to attend the meeting, which aims to strike a deal on major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
The UN says an unprecedented number of countries have promised emissions cuts.
Although new pledges on emissions cuts by the United States, India and China ahead of the Copenhagen summit had raised hopes of a meaningful deal, BBC environment correspondent Richard Black says signs of disagreement are already apparent.
He reports that the Association of Small Island States, who have most to lose from rising sea levels, has strongly suggested that its 43 members will not sign a deal that they believe votes their nations out of existence.
This would suggest they want a process that puts the world on course to a warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, significantly lower than any deal envisaged by the major economies.
In July, the G8 bloc of industrialised countries and some major developing countries adopted a target of keeping the global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times to 2C.
Meanwhile, the African Union representative has threatened to walk out of the talks unless industrialised countries help poor ones pay for the transition to cleaner economies.
The main areas for discussion at Copenhagen include:
- Targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions, in particular by developed countries
- Financial support for mitigation of and adaptation to climate change by developing countries
- A carbon trading scheme aimed at ending the destruction of the world's forests by 2030
Any agreement made at Copenhagen is intended to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012.
World leaders who have pledged to attend include US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
'Immediate action'
In his opening remarks, the Danish prime minister told delegates that the world was looking to the conference to safeguard humanity.
"By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future," Mr Rasmussen said.
UN climate convention head Yvo de Boer said the time had come to deliver cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
"The time for formal statements is over. The time for re-stating well-known positions is past," he told delegates.
"Copenhagen will only be a success if it delivers significant and immediate action."
Connie Hedegaard, conference president and Denmark's former climate minister, said: "This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If we ever do."
Meanwhile, a new poll commissioned by the BBC suggests that public concern over climate change is growing across the world.
In the survey, by Globescan, 64% of people questioned said that they considered global warming a very serious problem - up 20% from a 1998 poll.
To stress the importance of the summit, 56 newspapers in 45 countries are publishing the same editorial on Monday, warning that climate change will "ravage our planet" unless action is agreed, the London-based Guardian reported.
The editorial - published in 20 languages - was thrashed out by editors ahead of the Copenhagen talks, the newspaper said.
"At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world," the editorial says.
Environmental activists are planning to hold protests in Copenhagen and around the world on 12 December to encourage delegates to reach the strongest possible deal.
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