The European Commission welcomes the results of the UN climate change conference in Poznań. The conference kept on track the international process to conclude a new global climate agreement at the end of next year in Copenhagen. It took a series of decisions including work programmes for 2009 which will accelerate the negotiations. Parties also reached a solution to make operational the Kyoto Protocol’s Adaptation Fund for developing countries. The climate and energy package agreed at the Brussels summit on 12 December attracted considerable attention at the conference.
“Poznań has proved a useful staging post on the way to the Copenhagen conference a year from now, when the world must conclude an ambitious new global climate agreement for the post-2012 period,” European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said. “The growing consensus over the past 10 days, including on developing a shared vision for the new global agreement, is encouraging, but there is still a huge amount of work ahead of us to reach a satisfactory agreement in Copenhagen. I very much welcome the solution to the legal problems surrounding the Adaptation Fund which means developing countries can now start to receive funding.”
Commissioner Dimas added: “The agreement at the Brussels summit sets an example to the rest of the world that moving towards a low-carbon society is fully compatible with continued prosperity. We now have the measures to deliver on our commitment to cut emissions 20% by 2020. But this can be only a first step. The latest science is telling us that developed countries as a group must reduce their emissions 30% by 2020 to prevent climate change from reaching dangerous proportions. The EU is committed to a 30% cut if other developed countries commit to comparable reductions under the Copenhagen agreement. This is what we have been arguing for in Poznań and what we will continue to argue for all the way to Copenhagen. It is now time for our partners in the developed world to put forward ambitious emission targets and join us in leadership.”
