The lack of progress in the Post-Kyoto talks is threatening to put obstacles in the upcoming November UN Climate Conference in Doha, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s environmental department, Oleg Shamanov, said on Wednesday.
“Regarding the progress that we have already reached, this conference [in Doha] will be about nothing,” Shamanov said during open consultations for the Doha climate meeting held in Bonn, Germany.
The diplomat said that the two-week talks that are due to end on Friday had so far not brought any results.
After last year’s Climate Change Conference in South Africa’s Durban, 35 member states of the Kyoto Protocol agreed to adopt a universal legal treaty on climate change until 2015 after the initial agreement expires in 2012.
Kyoto’s second commitment period will start on January 1, 2013.
However soon after the Durban climate conference, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, citing its ineffectiveness.
The Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was first negotiated in 1997 with the goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.