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Figueres eyes climate deal in 2011

02 June, 2010

Countries could agree the foundations for a post-2012 global climate change deal in Mexico this year, with the fully elaborated regime finalised in 2011, Christiana Figueres, the incoming executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat, told Carbon Finance.

“What is done in Cancún is just as critical – in fact even more critical – to the global agreement than working on the legal text right now,” she said. “I see all of this as an integrated process where all of these aspects need to be seriously considered and delivered in order to get to the agreement.

“Parties seem to have already shown their intent this year to focus on the delivery of these building blocks,” she added, referring to efforts to reach agreement on fast-start financing for climate change adaptation and mitigation, a framework for technology transfer, and one for projects which reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation.

“Those are all components that are frankly quite close to agreement and can be delivered this year ... based on that, parties will have the increased confidence with each other to begin to come back to the issue of the design of the regime next year and contemplate the various options that they have in front of them,” Figueres said.

Reaching agreement on these elements this year will also go a long way to restoring trust between parties, she added. “In Cancún, we have a very important opportunity to show that those pledges that have been made will come forward, will be realised, and that will contribute to a very critical trust-building process that needs to occur this year in order that we can use that as a platform for continuing to build the global agreement,” she said.

Figueres was last month named as successor to Yvo de Boer. She will take over when he steps down in July, to move to KPMG.

*Read the full interview with Christiana Figueres in the June issue of Carbon Finance. Click here for more information

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