4 December 2009: The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) of the UN General Assembly has approved 11 draft resolutions, including a text on the protection of global climate for present and future generations of humankind. The draft would have the Assembly stress the seriousness of climate change and call on States to work cooperatively towards achieving the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC by urgently implementing it.

The text would also urge States that have not yet done so to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to the Convention in a timely manner. Further to that text, the Assembly would urge the parties to the Convention and invite parties to the Kyoto Protocol to continue to make use of the information contained in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their work. The General Assembly would also request that the UN Secretary-General make provisions for the sessions of the Conference of Parties to the Convention and its subsidiary bodies in his proposal for the programme budget for the biennium 2010-2011. Furthermore, the text would have the Assembly note the ongoing parallel work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex 1 Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP), and that the respective parties to the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol call for the completion of this work.

After the approval of the draft resolution, several representatives including Sweden, speaking on behalf of the EU, and Sudan, speaking for the Group of 77 and China, welcomed the consensus reached by the Committee on the issue and highlighted the importance of approaching Copenhagen in such a positive spirit. The representatives of Peru and Colombia lamented that the text had omitted references to low-lying countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. [UN Press Release]