At a press conference at the UNFCCC climate talks in Mexico today UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner formally presented the Emissions Gap Report to the government of Mexico, and panelists including Mexican Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira, UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Chris Huhne, and UN Ambassador from Grenada, Dessima Williams, spoke about the importance of the report in helping the world achieve the goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5 or 2.0°C.
What follows below are few key themes.
On the significance of the report to individual parties of the negotiations, Ambassador Dessima Williams of Grenada – “Robust scientific information is quintessential to improving our understanding and to guide policymakers and leaders. This report does that, and we are enormously grateful.”
On the importance of the report at this point in the process towards achieving a global climate treaty, Mexico Environment Minister Elvira – “I believe that this will be one of the most influential documents since the publication of the fourth assessment report of the IPCC.”
On the need for ongoing assessment of the emissions gap and ways to close it, UK Sec of State for Energy and Climate Chris Huhne – “I find it astonishing, having spent most of my life dealing with the economic area, that we have two enormous reports each year, from both the IMF and the OECD, on the world economy, and we don’t have an annual report actually telling us what’s happening to our absolutely fundamental ecosystem.”