Global General

UN climate conference proposes new body to govern funding

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-12-11 17:03

CANCUN, Mexico - The president of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) published a new draft document covering long-term commitment actions (LCA) on Friday, which includes detailed financing plans but no binding emission cut targets.

The document proposes a governing body for the fund with 40 national representatives, including seven each from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and two each from the groups of small island states and least developed nations.

The document, which still needs the approval of ministers, also proposes a standing committee to design the fund and develop conventions on reporting.

The document, however, fails to set mandatory targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction.

In the section on how developed nations will reduce emissions, known as national appropriate mitigation commitments or actions, the UN body "takes note" of emission reduction targets that will be published in a document later. This allows developed countries to set their own targets, which by tradition will be reductions in percentage terms compared with a baseline year.

In the section on developing nation action, known as national appropriate mitigation actions, developing nations are asked to contribute a similar list which might be expressed in other terms including carbon output per person, per unit of energy or per unit of gross domestic product.

In both cases, wording provides for a public review of nations' performance versus these targets, but is far from the legally binding text of the Kyoto Protocol. A new text of the protocol published earlier on Friday calls for nations to seek deeper binding cuts up to 40 percent compared with 1990 levels. The new text also remains to be approved by the conference.

The LCA draft text, if approved, will become the procedures used to implement last year's Copenhagen agreement, which called for global temperatures to rise no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The 2 degree level is the one agreed by scientists to prevent unprecedented environmental disasters, rather than a safe limit. But many nations continue to push for a level of 1.5 degrees or below.

A United Nations Environment Program report published in November said that existing pledges were around 40 percent short of what is needed for a 2 degree limit.