Countries focus on ‘concrete solutions’ to build new UN-backed global climate accord

UN News Centre: Delegates from more than 160 countries have agreed on a set of climate change policy measures as part of an ongoing United Nations-led effort to create a new, universal climate accord by 2015 to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre- industrial levels.

“Countries discussed concrete solutions to speed up and scale up action,” said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), following the international negotiation panel in Bonn, Germany.

She said that the representatives also discussed how to construct a transparent, measurable, verifiable agreement that gets the best out of all countries. “And they are committed to sticking to their own timetable.”

The task of the UNFCCC's Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) is to negotiate a new, universal climate agreement by 2015, to come into force from 2020, and to find ways to increase current inadequate global ambition to address human-generated climate change before 2020.

Ms. Figueres reminded governments during the meeting that “while they are on track to meet the milestones they have set themselves, they are not yet on track to meet the demands of science.”...