COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

The 15th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) was held in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December 2009.

Following intense negotiations industrialized countries pledged to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries decarbonize their economies using green technologies. To achieve this objective they also agreed to provide $10 billion annually from 2010 to 2012.

The “Copenhagen Accord’’ is not a binding international treaty but the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would work with Member States to ensure that their commitments are incorporated into a legally binding treaty by the end of 2010.

Ban also said that the Accord was “a big step forward” from the climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007, when countries committed to control emissions but offered neither funding nor a disbursement mechanism.

UNIDO Director-General, Kandeh K. Yumkella headed the Organization’s delegation to Copenhagen. He said that “action was needed at the individual level to reduce, reuse and recycle; at the corporate level to invest in energy efficient and low-carbon production; and at the governmental level to “Seal the Deal” in Copenhagen”.

Yumkella also said that “at the global level, the patterns of energy and material consumption are so high that they have become unsustainable. The world now consumes so much materials and energy that we are rapidly outstripping the planet’s available resources. More worryingly, our consumption inevitably leads to increasing amounts of waste and pollution which in its quantity and toxicity overwhelms the assimilative capacity of the global ecosystems.”

He cautioned that developing countries should not repeat the mistakes of the past by following unsustainable patterns of growth. “The old approach: “grow now, clean up later” is no longer acceptable. The world must pursue a path of resource efficiency and a low-carbon growth to survive,” said Yumkella.

He stressed that industry has a critical role to play, adding: “It is, after all, the prime manufacturer of the goods and services that societies consume. Industry in developing countries needs to grow - as industrial development remains the key means that will enable them to reduce the level of poverty and hardship they face. Our goal is to make sure that the industry of tomorrow is a green one.”

In the lead up to Copenhagen, UNIDO organized a series of high-level conferences on Green Industry and Renewable Energy and continues to implement projects to improve energy access, energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions in developing countries.

UNIDO has been continuously supporting the leadership of the UN Secretary-General and the efforts of the international community to seal a deal in Copenhagen. UNIDO’s concept of “green industry” is a testimony to the Organization’s firm commitment and support for the Copenhagen process and beyond.

“We will continue to play our part by working with our 173 Member States to help them develop and implement a Green Industry concept. We will continue to provide key advisory services and technical support whenever they are required,” said Yumkella, who heads the Secretary-General’s Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change as well as UN-Energy.

Watch the podcast with Director-General Yumkella on CNN’s Amanpour programme

Read UNIDO Director-General’s blog on the COP15 website

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