France: UN Climate Efforts Fall Short
Efforts spearheaded by the United Nations to reach a global deal to fight climate change are "inadequate", a French minister said on Monday in a sign of growing frustration before Paris hosts a major meeting later this year.
Governments will try on Monday to streamline an 89-page draft text of a U.N. deal to fight climate change due to be agreed in the French capital in December, hoping to avoid the acrimony of the last failed attempt.
"The U.N. negotiations are totally inadequate for the climate emergency we are facing," Environment Minister Segolene Segolene Royal said in an interview published in Le Monde.
"In private everybody is saying it ... but the weight of the process means it is carrying on as if there was no problem."
The 190-nation talks among delegates in the German city of Bonn from June 1-11 will try to narrow down vastly differing options, ranging from promises to slash greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 to vague pledges to curb rising emissions.
"This gap between UN procedure and the climate emergency is starting to pose a real problem and exasperating the countries that are the biggest victims of climate change," she said.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is presiding December's talks, told Reuters on May 26 a deal in Paris was within reach, but that the hurdles remained and getting a consensus between 196 parties was very difficult.
Royal, a senior French Socialist known for being outspoken, blamed negotiators for past failures.
"Bonn must obey the political instructions of heads of state and governments. Otherwise, the negotiators, who have been there for 15 years, if not 20 years, will just continue going through the motions," she said.
Reporting By John Irish
