Two months after summit, UN climate pointman to quit

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – The head of the UN's climate convention said Thursday that he is resigning, in a surprise announcement barely two months after the fiercely-contested Copenhagen summit on tackling global warming.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will resign as of July 1.

He will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC said in Bonn, Germany.

No regrets, says UN climate chief after resignation announcement

De Boer had come under fire for the outcome of the December 7-19 UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen, which ended in near-chaos as world leaders scrambled to find a face-saving deal.

But as recently as January 20, the UNFCCC had said de Boer would stay in the job and expected his term to be renewed later this year.

In a statement, de Boer said it had been a "difficult decision" to step down.

"I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia," he said.

"Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming.

"This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen."

In New York, a UN statement said de Boer informed UN chief Ban Ki-moon in advance of his decision to step down from July 1 and added that the secretary general "with regret, respected his decision."

Janos Pasztor, a senior UN official dealing with climate change, said de Boer gave his resignation "in a way that allows the secretary general to appoint a new executive secretary well in time to make sure that the negotiation process is not perturbed in any major way.

"We don't know how long this will take but it will certainly take a few months and the secretary general is prepared to get the recruitment process going as soon as possible and in fact he's already started today," he added.

De Boer, a quiet-spoken British-educated 55-year-old Dutch national, was appointed to lead the UNFCCC in September 2006 and immediately carved out a highly visible role.

He championed hopes for a new treaty on climate change that would take effect after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's current pledges expire.

The drumbeat of expectations reached a peak in Copenhagen, which was attended by more than 120 heads of state and government, making it the biggest top-level meeting in the UN's history.

Despite two years' preparation, the summit yielded just a vague agreement, hastily put together by the world's major carbon emitters, and which failed even to get the backing of a plenary session.

Supporters of the accord admit it fell short of expectations, while its many critics describe it as a failure or betrayal.

Despite the controversy, De Boer had persistently said he would remain in the job.

His "contract runs out in September, but he certainly has no intention of leaving and expects it to be renewed," a member of the UNFCCC said in an email to AFP on January 20.

Climate change: UN process now in limbo

"His resignation is partly a sign that it's a very difficult job," Wendel Trio, head of Greenpeace International's political and business unit, told AFP.

"Everything that happened in Copenhagen, with 128 heads of state coming to the meeting, created high expectations on the executive secretary of the UNFCCC to get an outcome," said Trio.

After Thursday's announcement, some negotiators privately criticised de Boer for lacking the easy charm and diplomatic skills needed to soothe wounded national pride and building consensus.

Others, though, praised him for his hard work and belief in equity, in arguing that a climate deal could only be acceptable globally if it addressed the problems facing poor countries.

US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern praised de Boer as an "enormously dedicated leader in the fight against global climate change."

"We appreciate his commitment, his wisdom and his determination to move the world in the right direction," Stern said in a statement.

"Throughout the negotiation process, Mr. de Boer continuously worked to provide a platform for both rich and poor nations and tried to give them equal opportunities to express their views and speak out for their rights," said Kim Carstensen of WWF.

World leaders "could learn much from de Boer's perseverance, as well as his uncompromising commitment to do what's necessary -- not just what's easy," said Antonio Hill of Oxfam.

The UNFCCC, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit, gathers 194 nations in the search for combatting the causes of man-made climate change and easing its effects.

Its key achievement is the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty that requires curbs in heat-stoking greenhouse gases blamed for disrupting the climate system.

U.N. Cimate Chief De Boer To Quit In July
Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 19 Feb 10;

LONDON/OSLO - U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said Thursday he will step down in July to join a consultancy group, saying a new era of diplomacy was starting after the Copenhagen summit fell short of agreeing a new treaty.

Analysts said the departure of the energetic and often sharp-tongued de Boer was unlikely to dent U.N.-led climate talks meant to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol but stalled over sharing the cost of cutting carbon emissions.

The Dutch former environment official, who has run the Secretariat since 2006, will join KPMG in London. He was also considering part-time work at universities -- Yale in the United States and Maatstricht and Utrecht in the Netherlands.

"I've found this job incredibly challenging," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It was a very exciting place to be but it also takes a huge toll on you personally."

"I feel that Copenhagen has put a new era of climate policy on the tracks and that offers me an opportunity to come at this from a new direction," he said of his shift to focus on business involvement in combating climate change.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would decide on a replacement in coming months to head the Bonn-based Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). De Boer's two predecessors were from the Netherlands and Malta.

Janos Pasztor, Director of Ban's Climate Change Support Team, said: "There is no prescription about where the new executive secretary should come from, whether it should be from a developing or developed country."

COPENHAGEN

The Copenhagen meeting in December missed de Boer's own benchmarks for success, neither specifying exact emissions limits for developed nations nor a timeframe to agree a pact.

But it was applauded for harnessing pledges from both rich and poor to curb their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. And as part of a Copenhagen Accord, rich nations agreed to provide $10 billion a year from 2010-12, with a goal of $100 billion a year from 2020, to help poor nations deal with climate change.

De Boer said that meant the Secretariat would have to shift to help implement the national plans as part of efforts to help slow droughts, floods and rising sea levels.

A successor would have to be "someone sensitive to the concerns of developing countries," he said. The shift did not mean giving up on securing more ambitious pledges to cut greenhouse gases.

De Boer's departure "won't have any effect on the carbon market," said Seb Walhain, head of environmental markets at Fortis Netherlands. Carbon markets depend on the U.N. talks to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol from 2013.

U.N. rules require consensus among all 194 countries, partly hampering climate talks and leading some analysts to call for a new approach, for example through G20 world leaders.

"We must quickly find a suitable successor who can oversee the negotiations and reform the UNFCCC to ensure it is up to the massive task," said British Energy and Climate Change minister Ed Miliband.

De Boer said "it remains to be seen" if the next annual meeting in Mexico in November and December would agree a full treaty. He said there seemed to be support for an extra set of U.N. talks in April, perhaps in Germany or France.

"Yvo de Boer has been an enormously dedicated leader in the fight against climate change and has made a major contribution in advancing that effort," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said.

"I have always greatly appreciated Yvo de Boer; his engagement and his sharp tongue," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said. She said he was "not always the perfect diplomat" but communicated the urgency of climate change.

De Boer, born in 1954, is known for his quips -- he compared his own large ears to those of Dr. Spock in the TV series "Star Trek" and compared the drawn-out process at the Copenhagen summit to cooking a Christmas turkey or baking a cake.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

UN climate chief quits, leaves talks hanging
Arthur Max, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;

AMSTERDAM – The sharp-tongued U.N. official who shepherded troubled climate talks for nearly four years announced his resignation Thursday, leaving an uncertain path to a new treaty on global warming.

Exhausted and frustrated by unrelenting bickering between rich and poor countries, Yvo de Boer said he will step down July 1 to work in business and academia.

With no obvious successor in sight, fears were voiced that whoever follows will be far less forceful than the skilled former civil servant from the Netherlands.

His departure takes effect five months before 193 nations reconvene in Cancun, Mexico, for another attempt to reach a worldwide legal agreement on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for the gradual heating of the Earth that scientists predict will worsen weather-related disasters.

The resignation "comes at the worst time in the climate change negotiations," said Agus Purnomo, Indonesia's special presidential assistant on climate change. "His decision will ultimately add to the difficulties we already have in reaching a successful outcome in Mexico."

Others believed the talks would move ahead unhindered, and could even be a window for shifting course.

"There's certainly no reason his resignation should slow progress," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "The key to progress remains with the major countries."

"A change of leadership ... provides a fresh opportunity to re-energize international negotiations ahead of the U.N. climate summit in Mexico," said Steve Howard of British-based The Climate Group.

De Boer agreed. "I hope my successor will rebuild confidence in the process," he told The Associated Press.

De Boer made the announcement just two months after a disappointing summit in Copenhagen that ended with a nonbinding accord brokered by President Barack Obama promising emissions cuts and immediate financing for poor countries — but even that failed to win consensus agreement.

In an AP interview last month, de Boer acknowledged that the summit left him deeply disheartened. "After Copenhagen I was very depressed. I was depressed for a few weeks," he said.

But within days he was holding private talks to patch over bitter accusations between Britain and China, and was publicly calling on all sides to stop slinging mud about responsibility for Copenhagen's breakdown.

De Boer's successor will be named by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has put climate change on the top of his own and the U.N.'s priorities. He is likely to look for a candidate from the developing countries.

De Boer spoke to Ban on Wednesday. "I know he wants to move quickly on this," he said.

The U.N. chief accepted the resignation "with regret," U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. Ban said de Boer "will be difficult to replace."

Okabe said Ban will consult with the 11-member "bureau," a rotating body of national delegates that deals with administrative issues and represents the major regions and negotiating blocs in the climate talks.

Among its members are several who are unlikely to want a strong-willed diplomat in de Boer's vacated chair.

They include the chief delegate from Sudan and spokesman for the developing countries, Lumumba Di-Aping, who rocked the Copenhagen conference when he accused wealthy countries of imposing a deal that would condemn the poor countries of Africa to a genocide comparable to the Holocaust. Another member of the bureau is Mohammad Salim al-Sabban, a counselor of Saudi Arabia's petroleum ministry.

Despite de Boer's frenetic diplomacy talks on a successor accord to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set emissions targets for industrial countries, have been bogged down in mutual recriminations and arguments over sharing the burden of fighting climate change.

De Boer told AP he believed climate talks should be conducted differently, relying less on formal negotiations among thousands of delegates from nearly 200 countries and instead seeking agreement among smaller groups to lay the groundwork of a deal.

"At the moment, it tends to be very much a stop-and-start affair with everything concentrated in the formal negotiations, where I think a much more continuous engagement ... is needed," he said.

Though he said Copenhagen "wasn't what I had hoped it would be," he said the frustration over the summit was not responsible for his decision to quit. Rather, it was time to seek new challenges. "I took this job to see the launch of negotiations on a global response to climate change," he said in an interview. "I feel that's happened. ... I think things are on track."

De Boer won wide praise Thursday for raising the profile of climate change on the international agenda.

"I have always greatly appreciated Yvo de Boer; his engagement and his sharp tongue. Not always a perfect diplomat," said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's commissioner for climate action.

Todd Stern, Obama's special climate envoy, praised de Boer as "an enormously dedicated leader" who made a major contribution to fighting climate change.

De Boer's job was not supposed to involve him directly in the negotiations, yet he lobbied, prodded, formulated tasks and goals, and frequently chided governments for moving too slowly and being too obstinate. He described his role as "the conscience of the process."

Often accused of overstepping the bounds of his office, he didn't disagree.

"They are absolutely right. I did that because I felt the process needed that extra push," he told the AP on Thursday.

He recalled that when he was picked for the job by Kofi Annan in 2006, he told the then-U.N. Secretary General: "If you want someone to sit in Bonn and keep his mouth shut then I'm not the right person for the job."

Asked about his greatest satisfaction, he noted the plan adopted in 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, when developing countries agreed to join in efforts to contain global warming in return for financial and technical help from the wealthy nations.

The Bali meeting was so intense that during its final meeting, when he was accused of mishandling negotiating arrangements, he walked off the podium in tears. He came back later to an ovation from the thousands of delegates.

___

Associated Press Writers Robert Wielaard in Brussels, Seth Borenstein in Washington and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.