Copenhagen Accord
Copenhagen Climate Negotiations December 7-19,2009. The climate talks which took place recently in Copenhagen can be regarded as an important step towards a binding international climate agreement. The parties involved in the negotiations were unable to reach a legally binding or a government agreement under the UNFCCC in Copenhagen and final agreement was delayed to future meetings.
The Copenhagen Accord supported by most of the 194 parties to the UNFCCC, outlines some basic commitments but does not include the level of detail developed in the draft UNFCCC text that was negotiated over the past two years nor does it carry the weight of a UNFCCC agreement. The mandate for the AWG-LCA group (the Ad hoc Working group for Long term Cooperative Action, which has been negotiating the new agreement under the Bali Action Plan) and the AWG-KP (the Ad hoc Working group for the Kyoto Protocol, which has been negotiating the next commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol) has been extended through next year, giving Parties an opportunity to finalize and agree to new commitments in Bonn in June or Cancun in December 2010. However, no official timeline has been established for a legally binding agreement under the UNFCCC.
