Governments recognize need for deep emission cuts, says WWF
03 Sep 2007
Vienna, Austria - Governments negotiating a new global deal on climate change accepted a safe range for emission reductions of harmful climate pollution, WWF said today.
The talks in Vienna were designed to prepare for the UN's ministerial conference on climate change in Bali in December. The 100 countries meeting in the Austrian capital were to agree the level of emissions cuts that are needed from industrialized countries.
The current targets agreed under the Kyoto Protocol end in 2012. In Bali, environment ministers need to formally launch the negotiations that will conclude in 2009 with an agreement on new binding deeper cuts in heat trapping climate pollution.
Governments reluctantly accepted scientific findings that these reductions must be in the range of 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. In Bali, they will have to formally adopt this.
But the citizens of Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Switzerland will have to pressure their governments into action, as these were the countries hindering progress in Vienna.
"In 2007 we have seen a surge in public support for political action against climate change," says Hans Verolme, Director of WWF's Global Climate Change Programme. "Smart politicians will translate this tremendous public support for a clean future into action today."
"At the upcoming UN Summit in New York on 24 September, Presidents and prime ministers will have to open the starting gate for serious, formal negotiations to get the emissions down," said Hans Verolme. "The UN is the right place where countries agree joint strategies to deal with the climate problem."
Find out more
Hans Verolme
Phone: +1 202 492 7358
Email: mhiller@wwfint.org
Kathrin Gutmann
Phone: +49 162 291 4445
Email: gutmann@wwf.de
Brian Thomson
Phone: +41 79 477 3553
Email: bthomson@wwfint.org
