BANGKOK A Untied Nations-sponsored climate change talks designed to take the Bali Road Map for cutting carbon emissions a step further began on March 31.
The meeting, coming three months after a landmark agreement reached in Bali to set a road map for strengthening international action on climate change, is tasked with setting the work program for negotiations to be concluded by the end of 2009 on concrete plans to halt the increase in global carbon emissions by 2015 and dramatically cut them by 2050.
“What this meeting has to do is agree to a work program and agree what is going to be discussed so that we know that we can meet the deadline in a year-and-a-half time,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that is hosting the meeting.