Although lots of discussions and negotiations have been going on since the commencement of the 16th section of the Conference of Parties (COP) on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, there had not been any progress.
Dr Seth Osafo, Legal Advisor to the African Group of Negotiators of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said the Adhoc Working Group on Long-range
Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and Adhoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol for further commitment on the Annex one parties (AWG-KP) had been working rigorously, yet there had not been any progress.
The groups on Cooperative Action and Kyoto-Protocol are groups from different countries working on various components of the UNFCCC.
Annex one Parties discuss the further commitment of the developed countries.
Dr Osafo was speaking to the Ghana News Agency at the end of week one of the on-going Climate Change conference in Cancún, Mexico.
He said the developed countries had deliberately refused to come up with the adequate numbers that were required to amend the AWG-
KP.
"For a number of months now we have been trying to get them to come out clearly with emission reduction target but they keep delaying," he said.
Dr Osafo noted that within the Cooperative Action Group, the developed countries had maintained their pledge at the 15th section of
COP in Copenhagen but these were inadequate.
"The commitment of 30 billion US dollars to the developing world over the next three years, rising to 100 billion dollars per year by 2020,
was woefully inadequate to take care of climate change and its related problems globally.
"To make matters worse Japan early this week came out to say that she will not be party to the second commitment period of the AWG- KP. This is a big blow to the conference and appears to have dumped the hopes of the developing countries," he said.
He said under the Bali Action Plan (BAP) of the AWG-KP, there was no particular area that progress had been made, adding that the Chair of the UNFCCC, Ms Christiana Figueres, had taken the initiative to deliberate with some key countries on certain components of BAP.
This include mitigation action plan which was crucial to developing countries.
The Bali Action Plan is an international strategy that talks about the support in the area of climate change financing, adaptation and
mitigating actions into sectoral and national programmes.
He expressed the hope that a meaningful agreement would be reached once the ministerial section started at the second week of the
conference and that failure would be a big blow to the multinational negotiations.
From Albert Oppong Ansah, GNA Special Correspondent, Cancun,Mexico