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\t\t\t\tby Agence France-Presse <\/p>\n
PARIS—The head of the United Nations’ climate convention said Thursday that he was to resign, in a surprise announcement that comes barely two months after the fiercely contested Copenhagen summit on tackling global warming.<\/p>\n
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Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, will resign as of July 1, the UNFCCC secretariat in Bonn, Germany, said. He will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities.<\/p>\n
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De Boer had come under fire for the outcome of the Dec. 7-19 UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen, which ended in near-chaos as world leaders scrabbled to find a face-saving deal.<\/p>\n
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But as recently as Jan. 20, the UNFCCC had said de Boer would stay in the job and expected his term to be renewed later this year.<\/p>\n
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In a statement, de Boer said it had been a “difficult decision” to step down. “I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia,” he said.<\/p>\n
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“Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen.”<\/p>\n
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De Boer, a quiet-spoken, British-educated, 55-year-old Dutch national, was appointed the UNFCCC’s executive secretary in September 2006, and carved out a highly visible role. He had championed hopes for a breakthrough at Copenhagen that would unlock a new treaty on climate change that would take effect after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol’s current pledges expire.<\/p>\n
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Instead, despite nearly two years of negotiations, the summit was only able to yield a general agreement, crafted by the world’s major carbon emitters in chaotic last-minute scenes. The so-called Copenhagen Accord would limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but does not spell out the means for achieving this goal, and the pledges made under it are only voluntary.<\/p>\n
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The document did not gain approval at a plenary session of the UNFCCC, and it has so far failed to gain the official endorsement of major developing emitters which helped to craft it.<\/p>\n
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Supporters of the agreement admit it is a disappointment compared to the expected outcome. Its many critics describe it as a failure or betrayal.<\/p>\n
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Despite the controversy, De Boer had persistently said he would remain in the job. His “contract runs out in September, but he certainly has no intention of leaving and expects it to be renewed,” a member of the UNFCCC said in an email to AFP on Jan. 20.<\/p>\n
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“His resignation is partly a sign that it’s a very difficult job,” Wendel Trio, head of Greenpeace International’s political and business unit, told AFP. “Everything that happened in Copenhagen, with 128 heads of state coming to the meeting, created high expectations on the executive secretary of the UNFCCC to get an outcome. Expectations remain high, although negotiations have proven and continue to prove rather difficult.”<\/p>\n
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The UNFCCC, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit, gathers 194 nations in the search for combatting the causes of human-made climate change and easing its effects. Its key achievement is the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty that requires curbs in heat-stoking greenhouse gases blamed for disrupting the climate system.<\/p>\n
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The successor to de Boer will be named by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.<\/p>\n
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