Nigeria First (Abuja)
18 November 2009
Abuja — President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has assured Nigerian team to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, holding in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009 of government's full support in the quest to make the nation's position known and accepted at the summit.
Addressing stakeholder groups on environment and others at a meeting in Abuja on November 12, aimed at putting together critical positions and strategies for the meeting, the President who was represented by the Minister of Environment, Mr. John Odey, urged the members of the negotiating team to approach the negotiations with all seriousness and aim at achieving a meaningful position for Nigeria and the continent.
"Nigeria will give this team a strong political backing to ensure that we have a deal. You must remember that this negotiation is about our lives, about the lives of our children and about the continued survival of humanity and our strategic national development." He said.
"Technical people, heads of groups, must be committed to what is ahead. It is not a holiday trip but the one that we must go to work. It is a business trip," he added.
The negotiators drawn from the Ministry of Environment, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation are to represent Nigeria at the conference which is expected to chart a new agreement on the prevention of climate change and global warming that would replace the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which runs out in 2012.
The Kyoto Protocol provides for the major industrialised countries to be subjected to legally binding commitments to curb their emissions of the six main greenhouse gases, namely carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.
The targets are based mostly on the emission levels of these pollutants in 1990. The treaty calls for industrialised nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent below 1990 levels. The target goals must be accomplished by 2012, and commitments to start achieving the targets started in 2008. But most countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are only subject to general, non-binding commitments.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 Nigeria First. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
