ID :
211079
Tue, 10/04/2011 - 11:38
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/211079
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Gwangju putting final touches on environment summit
GWANGJU, Oct. 4 (Yonhap) -- With a global urban environment summit less than a week away, the Gwangju metropolitan government is putting the final touches on hosting the southwestern city's biggest international gathering to date, organizers said Tuesday.
The 2011 Gwangju Summit of the Urban Environmental Accords (UEA) will be held in the city about 330 kilometers southwest of Seoul from Oct. 11-13 and is expected to bring together mayors, scholars and activists from nearly 120 cities and international organizations. The summit is hosted by the local government, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the U.S. city of San Francisco.
The Gwangju metropolitan government has finalized details for registration, security measures and the event's schedule, the officials said.
Signed in June 2005 by mayors from 52 cities to celebrate World Environment Day, the UEA has emerged as a hallmark of urban leadership's efforts to address the wide range of environmental issues facing cities, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The summit comes as the international community has been trying to come up with practical measures to fight against global warming, raising hopes that the Gwangju Framework will build on two major international agreements: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed at the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997.
A total of 105 cities, including Curitiba, Brazil, and Auckland, New Zealand, and 12 international organizations, including U.N.-Habitat and the World Bank, have registered for the event, adding to hopes that the summit will attract a record number of foreign officials and mayors to discuss future of the global environment.
A handful of well-known officials and activists are also slated to discuss environmental issues at symposiums and forums that will take place on the sidelines of the summit. Speakers include Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown and Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva.
Meanwhile, the Gwangju metropolitan government is fine-tuning the details of the summit's two major topics: developing a system to evaluate environmental policies and trying to revive a previous effort to set up an emissions trading framework.
Summit attendees will try to develop a practical and universal index to evaluate cities' eco-friendly policies. The existing standards are either outdated or do not consider the differences between developed and developing countries.
The other goal of the summit is to set up a framework for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as part of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A joint study with the UNEP has been under way since 2007.
The CDM was created under the Kyoto Protocol as one of several ways to facilitate carbon trading in an effort to get cities to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The 1997 protocol obliges nearly 40 developed countries to reduce their emissions over a five-year period through the end of 2012 by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels.
But the CDM has not led to a functional carbon trading system, and so summit attendees hope to discuss the agreement and hammer out a new framework for emissions trading.
Also, the UNEP and the Korean Environment Institute, a local environment think tank, will carry out research on the validity of the CDM on the sidelines of the summit and release the results at the end of the summit.
The three-day summit kicks off on Oct. 11 with the opening of an environment exhibition and will run until Oct. 13. At the close of the summit, the participants are expected to announce Gwangju Declaration and a Gwangju Initiative summarizing what they have discussed.
khj@yna.co.kr
(END)
The 2011 Gwangju Summit of the Urban Environmental Accords (UEA) will be held in the city about 330 kilometers southwest of Seoul from Oct. 11-13 and is expected to bring together mayors, scholars and activists from nearly 120 cities and international organizations. The summit is hosted by the local government, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the U.S. city of San Francisco.
The Gwangju metropolitan government has finalized details for registration, security measures and the event's schedule, the officials said.
Signed in June 2005 by mayors from 52 cities to celebrate World Environment Day, the UEA has emerged as a hallmark of urban leadership's efforts to address the wide range of environmental issues facing cities, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The summit comes as the international community has been trying to come up with practical measures to fight against global warming, raising hopes that the Gwangju Framework will build on two major international agreements: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed at the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997.
A total of 105 cities, including Curitiba, Brazil, and Auckland, New Zealand, and 12 international organizations, including U.N.-Habitat and the World Bank, have registered for the event, adding to hopes that the summit will attract a record number of foreign officials and mayors to discuss future of the global environment.
A handful of well-known officials and activists are also slated to discuss environmental issues at symposiums and forums that will take place on the sidelines of the summit. Speakers include Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown and Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva.
Meanwhile, the Gwangju metropolitan government is fine-tuning the details of the summit's two major topics: developing a system to evaluate environmental policies and trying to revive a previous effort to set up an emissions trading framework.
Summit attendees will try to develop a practical and universal index to evaluate cities' eco-friendly policies. The existing standards are either outdated or do not consider the differences between developed and developing countries.
The other goal of the summit is to set up a framework for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as part of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A joint study with the UNEP has been under way since 2007.
The CDM was created under the Kyoto Protocol as one of several ways to facilitate carbon trading in an effort to get cities to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The 1997 protocol obliges nearly 40 developed countries to reduce their emissions over a five-year period through the end of 2012 by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels.
But the CDM has not led to a functional carbon trading system, and so summit attendees hope to discuss the agreement and hammer out a new framework for emissions trading.
Also, the UNEP and the Korean Environment Institute, a local environment think tank, will carry out research on the validity of the CDM on the sidelines of the summit and release the results at the end of the summit.
The three-day summit kicks off on Oct. 11 with the opening of an environment exhibition and will run until Oct. 13. At the close of the summit, the participants are expected to announce Gwangju Declaration and a Gwangju Initiative summarizing what they have discussed.
khj@yna.co.kr
(END)
