Isra-Mart srl:UN demands "concrete results" from Cancun summit

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The UN will call for "concrete results" to be delivered from the upcoming Cancun summit, after warning negotiators that climate change is likely to be far more severe than the scenarios mapped out in the most recent official analysis of climate science.

Speaking to reporters in New York yesterday, UN under secretary general for planning Robert Orr said that the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which is due for release in 2014, will be much worse than the last report released in 2007.

That report warned that based on business-as-usual projections, average global temperatures could rise by as much as six degrees by the end of the century, resulting in a catastrophic impact on the global economy.

Orr said the early indications revealed that the next report, which will be based on a wide range of scientific papers, will show that "just about everything... will be more dramatic than the last report, because that is where all the data is pointing."

He added that UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon will attend the summit and make it clear that countries "should not take any comfort in the climate deniers' siren call" and must instead be aware that climate change "is happening in an accelerated way".

Orr argued that the severity of the threat offered the main source of hope that progress towards a deal can be achieved in Cancun. If governments "understand the peril that their populations are in, it is much easier to get over the political hurdles to do what you have to do," he said.

He reiterated the UN's view that a binding deal would not be achieved in Cancun, but insisted that "the time has come for some decisions on issues and therefore we do want some concrete results". In particular, he highlighted that the UN wanted to see agreements on forestry protection, climate financing and technology transfer.

Orr's comments came as Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, launched a new report in London showing that the emission reduction commitments in the Copenhagen Accord would still leave the world's carbon emissions between five and nine billion tones of CO2 above that required by 2020 to avoid average global temperature rises of 2°C.

The report from UNEP, the European Climate Foundation and the National Institute of Ecology in Mexico concluded that emission levels of about 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020 were required to stand a reasonable chance of limiting temperature rises to under two degrees.

However, it concluded that if the weakest pledges contained in the Copenhagen Accord are enacted, annual emissions would still reach 53 billion tonnes, while if the most ambitious pledges are honoured, emissions could be cut to 49 billion tonnes.

"If we don't close the [five to nine billion tonne] gap, temperatures could rise roughly 2.5 to five degrees by the end of the century," said Joseph Alcamo, UNEP's chief scientist.