UN Climate Change chief Yvo de Boer decides to quit

Mr Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), today announced he had decided to step down from his position to pursue new opportunities to advance progress on the issue in both the private sector and academia.

A UN press release said Mr de Boer would stay in his current position until July 1 before joining the consultancy group KPMG as a Global Adviser on Climate and Sustainability and working with several universities.

The announcement came just two months after the Copenhagen Accord was reached at the UN summit on climate change in the Danish capital in December.

The Accord aims to jump-start immediate action on climate change and guide negotiations on long-term action, pledging to raise $100 billion annually by 2020. It also includes an agreement to working towards curbing global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius and efforts to reduce or limit emissions.

"Working with my colleagues at the UNFCCC Secretariat in support of the climate change negotiations has been a tremendous experience," Mr de Boer said in Bonn, Germany, where the body’s Secretariat is based.

"I have always maintained that while governments provide the necessary policy framework, the real solutions must come from business," he emphasized.

Countries did not reach a clear legal agreement in Copenhagen, but, he noted, "the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen."

In his remaining months as UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Mr. de Boer, who took up his post in September 2006, aims to move negotiations ahead before the next global conference to be held in Mexico later this year, the release said.

"Countries responsible for 80 per cent of energy related CO2 emissions have submitted national plans and targets to address climate change," it quoted him as saying. "This underlines their commitment to meet the challenge of climate change and work towards an agreed outcome in Cancun."

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that to stave off the worst effects of climate change, industrialized countries must slash emissions by 25 to 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, and that global emissions must be halved by 2050.

Last week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a new high-level advisory group, headed by the leaders of the United Kingdom and Ethiopia, intended to mobilize financing swiftly to help developing countries combat climate change.

"Let me emphasize the importance of rapid action," Mr. Ban told reporters here. "Developing countries need to move as quickly as possible toward a future of low-emissions growth and prosperity," he stressed, noting that millions of people in Africa and around the world are suffering from climate change’s effects.

Additionally, Mr Ban emphasized that assisting with adaptation efforts is a "moral imperative," as well as "a smart investment in a safer, more sustainable world for all."

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