Bonn is home base for the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and it’s where meetings are taking place this week to advance international agreement. With Copenhagen in the rear-view mirror and Cancun up ahead, there is a lot of discussion going of technical matters, and lots of side meetings by groupings of states such as the Group of 77 and the Small Island Developing States. There are also presentations and symposia of interest to the delegates.
These are also the first meetings to take place with new UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres at the helm. The July newsletter from the UNFCCC details some important developments, among them that Adaptation Fund money is finally being disbursed and that $4 billion has been pledged by 50 countries to be used over the next two years to finance critical REDD+ projects.
This is a huge down payment on what we need to do now and sustain over many decades if we want to preserve rainforest and other land essential for the biosequestration of carbon. Remember that tropical deforestation, among its many devastating impacts, is responsible for nearly a quarter of global CO2 emissions. (See Tropical Deforestation and Climate Change from the Environmental Defense Fund and IPAM.)
Here is Figueres in a message prior to the Bonn meetings.