UN Climate Chief: Technology Executive Committee meeting

UN climate chief welcomes first meeting of the Technology Executive Committee; urges deeper collaboration among countries with active stakeholder engagement

(Bonn, 1 September 2011) – The first meeting of the Technology Executive Committee (TEC), the policy arm of the Technology Mechanism, began in Bonn today. The meeting will see three days of key deliberations on how the TEC will operate and interact with the other institutions under the Convention to facilitate the implementation of the Technology Mechanism in achieving a significant global increase in the development, commercialisation, spread and use of environmentally-sound technologies.

At Cancun, governments agreed to limit global average temperature increases to below 2°C and increase finance and technology support to action of adaptation and mitigation. Key to this is increased public and private investment in development, deployment, diffusion and transfer of green technologies.

"The challenge we face calls for nothing less than a transformation of the world economy onto a green, sustainable pathway. Technology – both for adaptation and for mitigation – cannot but be at the very centre of this transformation," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. "Strengthened technology can help us get there faster and cheaper; it can help us get there cooperatively and collaboratively; and it can help us ensure that this transformation is both equitable and sustainable."

The Technology Mechanism was established at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun in December 2010, which was part of a set of institutions launched in Cancun to protect the vulnerable from climate change and to deploy the money and technology that developing countries need to plan and build their own sustainable futures.

"The Technology Mechanism cannot only be the next sequential step in our effort to spur clean technology development, deployment and transfer. The Technology Mechanism needs to be a quantum leap that will ensure the technological transformation urgently needed for the green energy and industry revolution," she said.

The Technology Mechanism will consist and operate through the Technology Executive Committee – the policy arm – and the Climate Technology Centre and Network, the mechanism’s implementation component. Its overarching goal is to sharpen the focus, step up the pace, and expand the scope of environmentally-sound technology development and transfer to developing countries in a highly qualitative way.

The goal of the Technology Mechanism can only be achieved through a wider and deeper collaboration among all countries with the active engagement of relevant stakeholders, including the research community, academia and, importantly, the private sector. "The Technology Mechanism must provide an effective platform for strengthening collaboration among all countries and engagement of stakeholders, where open exchanges can take place on needs and policies, investment and innovation, and supply and demand," said Figueres.

The TEC, as the policy arm, comprises 20 expert members whose experience includes technical, legal, policy, social development and financial expertise relevant to the area of mitigation and adaptation technologies. Over the next three days, the TEC needs to develop its modalities to perform its functions including how to engage stakeholders and a work plan that will lead to a fully operational Technology Mechanism in 2012.

For further information on the Technology Executive Committee, see: http://unfccc.int/ttclear/jsp/TEC.jsp

About the UNFCCC

With 195 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

See also: www.unfccc.int
Follow UNFCCC on Twitter: @UN_ClimateTalks
UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres on Twitter: @CFigueres
UNFCCC on Facebook: www.facebook.com/UNClimateTalks

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