The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), making up 42-island and low-lying coastal nations, has told Reuters that a deadline should be set for the UN climate treaty to be completed by 2011. After a disappointing meeting in Copenhagen last year and the low expectations for the up-coming climate change conference in Cancun, the AOSIS says a hard deadline should be set for 2011.
“In the case of climate, emergency requires speed,” AOSIS chair Dessima Williams of Grenada told Reuters. Other nations, including the US, are wary of setting a binding time-limit to complex negotiation.
AOSIS is also calling for a target to limit warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. The Group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) also support this goal. However, last year nations agreed on the less-ambitious goal of below 2 degrees Celsius in the Copenhagen Accord.
AOSIS nations view themselves as especially vulnerable to climate change given rising seas, worsening tropical storms, and coral reef decline.
After meeting in Cancun over the next two weeks, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will move next to Durban, South Africa in 2011.
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