UN Seeks to Fill Leadership Vacuum on Climate Change

Today, Yvo de Boer, Head of the UN Climate Secretariat, is calling for a summit of world leaders to break the gridlock plaguing efforts to stop global warming. With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012, agreement on what the international community’s next steps should be has been slow to materialize. At the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Nairobi last November, delegates failed to establish a timetable for future emissions cuts, although they were able to establish a timetable for future negotiations on adopting such cuts.

Following the conference, climate change activists and government ministers alike expressed disappointment. In a joint statement, the environment ministers of Germany and Britain said there was a need “to inject greater urgency and momentum into the process of driving down global emissions.” De Boer’s call for a summit of world leaders is an effort to generate this momentum.

Since the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, heads of state have not met for the sole purpose of discussing climate change. Instead, negotiating international climate change policy is a task that has largely fallen to Environment Ministers. With scientists predicting that we may have as little as a decade in which to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is time to call in the A-team. Considering global warming’s devastating potential – one recent report estimated damages at twenty percent of global GDP – a summit of world leaders to address the issue is long overdue.

The new UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon has said that fighting climate change will be a priority for him. Calling for a climate summit would be an excellent first step.


Updated January 17, 2007