Ministers dialogue on climate change

Accra, Aug. 14, GNA-Ministers of Environment and Climate from developing countries have resolved with their colleagues from the rich north to fast track the implementation of international policies to combat the negative effects of climate change since it remained the greatest threat to humanity.

Whiles the least developed south would be expanding and deepening carbon trapping and low emission measures, developed countries such as German and Japan have packaged financial and logistical support to implement international climate protection projects for prevention of deforestation in developing countries.

Ms. Sherry Ayittey, Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, disclosed this to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra at the weekend, after participating in the Climate Change Dialogue Conference in Bonn, Germany this month.

The aim of the conference was to explore how the core elements under negotiation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can be taken forward.

Ms. Ayittey said some of the pertinent issues include mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology to ending deforestation and promoting climate-friendly technologies and further developing emissions trading schemes.

The meeting also served as a platform for the participants to strategise and prepare for the UN climate conference to be held in Cancum, Mexico in December 2010.

She said the Ministers stressed on the need for governments to urgently give political guidance and assist in putting the UN climate negotiations back on track and end the vicious cycle of lack of trust and ambition.

Ms. Ayittey noted that the conference which was jointly opened by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican President Felipe Calder=F3n agreed on prioritizing further UN negotiations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in developed and newly industrializing countries; setting up an international system for monitoring mitigation activities; supporting adaptation measures in developing countries; and financing international climate protection.

She said government of Germany, South Africa and the Republic of Korea launched an initiative to support developing countries in elaborating environment- and climate-friendly growth strategies, subject to transparent, measurable and comprehensible implementation.