UN chief Ban Ki-moon has designated 2009 “the year of climate change”, saying that the issue needs to be kept high on the global agenda.
“We have no time to waste,” he says. “We must reach a global climate change deal before the end of the year – one that is balanced, comprehensive and ratifiable by all nations.
“Success will require extraordinary leadership,” he says, hailing progress made during last December’s conference in Poland where the 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change approved a work programme for talks leading up to a treaty to be sealed in Copenhagen next December.