UNITED NATIONS
NATIONS UNIES

INTERGOVERNMENTAL NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE
FOR A FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE (INC/FCCC)

COMITÉ INTERGOUVERNEMENTAL DE NÉGOCIATION
D'UNE CONVENTION-CADRE SUR LES CHANGEMENTS CLIMATIQUES (CIN/CCCC)

The Climate Change Treaty -- Accelerating Approvals

Geneva, 26 August 1993 -- With 31 ratifications officially registered and only 19 more needed to bring the Climate Change Convention into force, 34 governments announced here this week their intention to ratify the treaty before the end of the year.

Six countries -- Botswana, Burkina Faso, Kiribati, Mauritania, Sri Lanka, and Uganda -- told a session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC/FCCC) that they had completed their ratification process. Depositing the official papers at UN headquarters in New York would take at most a few weeks.

Twenty-eight other countries -- the 12 states of the European Community, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Congo, Ethiopia, Hungary, Mongolia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia -- also said they would ratify the treaty this year.

Four countries -- Bolivia, Guatemala, the Russian Federation, and Venezuela -- pledged to ratify early next year.

"Not only have we maintained the momentum since the signing of the treaty at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in June of last year, but the pace of ratifications has accelerated beyond our expectations", said Raúl Estrada Oyuela, INC/FCCC Chairman and Plenipotentiary Minister at the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The massive and active participation of both developed and developing countries -- 146 to be exact -- in this two-week meeting in Geneva reflects the seriousness with which governments consider the threat of global climate change."

Among the principal subjects at the meeting were "eligibility criteria" for financial assistance, "joint implementation" (an arrangement whereby one country invests in reducing another country's emissions rather than reducing its own emissions because this may be more "cost effective"), "comparable methodologies" for calculating emissions and removals of carbon dioxide, "technical support" for the Convention, and the strengthening of the scientific advisory role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The next session of the INC/FCCC will take place in Geneva from 7-18 February 1994.