Antigua Re-elected Chair of Climate Change Negotiations

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Environment Articles

Monday, 14 June 2010 06:15

By press release

Two weeks of UN Climate Change talks here have made important progress towards concluding what was left incomplete at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009.

The outcome is set to be presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún (COP 16) at the end of this year. The Bonn gathering was attended by more than 5,500 participants, including government delegates from 185 governments, along with representatives from business and industry, environmental organisations and research institutions.

While acknowledging the progress made Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Dr. the Hon. W. Baldwin Spencer, said that “the fact remains industrial country pledges fall well short of the -25-40% range of the scientific body, the IPCC, which gives us no more than a 50% chance to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees, a fact not helped by the less than ambitious pledges made by rich countries that so far add up to about 12-19% of emissions over 1990 levels by 2020 instead of minus 25 to minus 40% of emissions over 1990 levels recommended by the IPCC.”

Negotiations were held within the two main negotiating groups, the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), and the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). The AWG-KP focuses on emissions reduction commitments for the 37 industrialised countries (Annex I) that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and started work on turning the emission reduction pledges that developed countries made since Copenhagen into targets that can be formally compared in a UN negotiating context.

At its closing session today, the AWG-KP re-elected Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador Dr. John W. Ashe to a second term as Chairman. This is the first time in the five-year history of the AWG-KP that a serving chairman has ever been re-elected for a second term.

“I would like thank the 133 members of the Group of 77 and China for their support and for the confidence the AWG-KP as a whole has demonstrated in re-electing me to this important post,” said Chairman Ashe.    

The AWG-KP agreed to organize an in-session workshop during its August session, on Annex I parties’ aggregate and individual emission reductions, which should include discussions exploring a possible enhanced scale of emission reductions; and prepare a paper identifying and exploring the legal options, aimed at ensuring that there is no gap between the first and subsequent commitment periods, as well as the legal consequences and implications of a possible gap between the first commitment period that ends in 2012 and subsequent periods.

With 194 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 191 of the UNFCCC Parties.

Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.


The next UNFCCC negotiating session is scheduled to take place 2-6 August in Bonn, followed by a second one-week intersessional meeting (precise date and location yet to be agreed) before the UN Climate Change Conference 29 November to 10 December in Cancún.

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