Slovak News Back to the news
Slovak Environmentalists Disappointed by Copenhagen Summit
Sunday 20 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 20 (TASR) - The Slovak climate coalition is more than disappointed with the results of the UN Climate Change summit in Copenhagen and considers it to be a failure of world leaders, said climate coalition co-ordinator Pavol Siroky on Sunday.
Not only did the summit on the UN Framework Convention fail to meet the expectations of most of the world's population, but it also returned the negotiations to a pre-Kyoto-protocol era, claimed Siroky. "World leaders had the opportunity to show that they are serious about protection from climate change caused by humans. Instead, they produced clear evidence of how big the differences between East and West and between developing and developed countries are," he added.
Siroky thinks that quarrels over historical responsibility for emissions, about the sums required, over who has to pay how much, the issue of lowing emissions and who won't be obliged to anything negated efforts to resolve serious global problems of ongoing climate change. "The position of Slovakia didn't significantly alter from agreements passed by the European Union and the activities of the Slovak delegation in Copenhagen could be compared to those of a dead beetle. It seems as though our delegation decided that it is better to be quiet in order not to wreck anything and humiliate ourselves," he claimed.
The failure of the climate summit is an enormous problem from the point of view of the future protection of earth's climate, stated Greenpeace in Slovakia spokesperson Lucia Szabova. She thinks it is questionable whether world leaders will be able to come to an agreement at next year's summit in Mexico when they weren't able to pass an ambitious and binding agreement after so many years of preparation. "Right now politicians don't need any new evidence or information, they have to start doing what they've been elected for - to act in order to protect mankind from the effects of climate change," said Szabova.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit was held in Copenhagen between December 7-18, with a ministerial conference taking place as of Thursday. The conference was supposed to conclude the process of negotiations and approve a final international agreement between developing and developed countries on reductions in the rise of global temperatures. The goal was to ensure that average temperatures will go no higher than 2 degrees Celsius above those in pre-industrial times.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
