Lin­da Hutchin­son-Ja­far

Do­ha, Qatar-UN cli­mate change chief, Chris­tiana Figueres re­port­ed progress and suc­cess on day five of the two-week long glob­al cli­mate change con­fer­ence which has among its goals, the ex­ten­sion of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col, which ex­pires at the end of year. "We're at that point where we see the strands that are be­ing brought to­geth­er to be wo­ven," she told jour­nal­ists yes­ter­day in the Qatari cap­i­tal of Do­ha where the UN Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence is tak­ing place.

"What re­mains at the ta­ble is very much of a com­mit­ment on the part of gov­ern­ments to reach a deal which is in­clu­sive and trans­par­ent. The chal­lenge is to iden­ti­fy those strands and bring them to­geth­er in such a way to the next lev­el for the min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el," said Figueres, the Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC).

The meet­ing, which brings to­geth­er thou­sands of gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and civ­il so­ci­ety mem­bers from 195 coun­tries is ne­go­ti­at­ing sev­er­al key is­sues in­clud­ing the seam­less con­tin­u­a­tion of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2013, which com­mits legal­ly bind­ing emis­sion lim­i­ta­tion and re­duc­tion com­mit­ments on in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries.

Ne­go­tia­tors are seek­ing an agree­ment on re­duc­ing gas emis­sions, which reached record lev­els last year while a new World Bank re­port warned about an in­crease in world tem­per­a­tures by four de­grees by 2060. Ques­tioned on the slow pace to achieve a res­o­lu­tion, Figueres said coun­tries ar­rive at the ne­go­ti­a­tions with na­tion­al per­spec­tives while the sci­ence on ris­ing tem­per­a­ture is glob­al.

"Sci­ence de­mands a glob­al per­spec­tive and that's where we have the gap," she added. Gov­ern­ments are al­so seek­ing to reach a uni­ver­sal cli­mate change agree­ment cov­er­ing all coun­tries from 2020, to be adopt­ed by 2015. On the is­sue of the long-term cli­mate fi­nance to sup­port ac­tion in de­vel­op­ing na­tions, Figueres said ramp­ing up an­nu­al con­tri­bu­tions from de­vel­oped na­tions from $US10 bil­lion to US$100 bil­lion a year is "go­ing to be the heart of the dis­cus­sions."

Rich coun­tries have de­liv­ered on a 2009 agree­ment to con­tribute US$30 bil­lion in grants and loans but com­mit­ments will ex­pire this year. A Green Cli­mate Fund de­signed to chan­nel up to US$100 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to poor coun­tries is still in its in­fan­cy stage.