By EuAsiaNews,
Brussels : EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard , will visit the Maldives and India this week to discuss the follow-up to the December 2009 UN climate conference in Copenhagen and how to take forward international negotiations aimed at reaching a global climate agreement for the post-2012 period.
The visits take place just before this year’s first round of UN climate negotiations, in Bonn on 9-11 April. Both the Maldives and India were among the countries which negotiated the Copenhagen Accord, the principal outcome of the Copenhagen conference, and both have pledged emission reduction actions under it, the European Commission said in a statement.
In her visit Tuesday to the Maldives , one of the countries most under threat from climate change, but which has also pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2020, Hedegaard will meet President Nasheed, who played an active role in the Copenhagen conference, and other top politicians.
The Maldives is one of the most active members of the Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA) initiative set up by the European Commission, which aims to step up cooperation and dialogue between the EU and the developing countries that are being hit earliest and hardest by climate change and which have the least capacity to react.
During her visit to India on 7-9 April, Commissioner Hedegaard will meet Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and the Minister of Coal & Mines, Prakash Jaiswal, among others.
She will underline the need for action-oriented decisions to be reached at the UN climate conference at the end of this year in Mexico and ask for active support from India and the other BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, China) in integrating the substance of the Copenhagen Accord into UN decision texts.