Durban climate change framework lacks citizens’ support — UN
NINA CHESTNEY, REUTERS
March 10, 2012

LONDON – Ordinary people are not putting enough pressure on governments to deliver a legally binding deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the UN’s climate chief said.

“There is not enough well up from the bottom up. I don’t see millions of citizens demanding climate action,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a lecture on Friday.

“The reality we have to deal with is the process is very slow and the urgency is every day growing. The only way out is to continue to push on the government side but we can’t depend 100 percent on governments because they can’t deliver the 100 percent.”

After years of talks on a new deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions, countries from around the globe agreed last December in Durban to forge a new deal by 2015 forcing all the biggest polluters for the first time to limit pollution.

Some critics were disappointed with the deal, which would not come into force until 2020, saying it was too late to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.

Countries should start work in May in Bonn on a plan towards getting a legally binding deal by 2015, Figueres told reporters.

“They will hopefully look at the workplan from now to 2015 so they can identify the milestones they would want to have reached each year,” she said.

The content and shape of such milestones will be up to countries to decide, she added.

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