UN Chief Lays Out Climate Agreement Among His Top Agenda for 2013
22 January 2013
22 January 2013 –Climate change and sustainable development remain top priorities for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said, in an address to the General Assembly that he would continue to work for a climate change agreement in 2015.
In his first meeting of the year with the United Nations membership, the Secretary-General said that next year, “I intend to invite the leaders of the world, both individually and collectively, to mobilize the necessary political determination to adopt a strong, complete and binding instrument on climate change by 2015.”
“This is no time for business as usual,” Ban underscored. “To shape the future we want, we will have to think and act innovatively and differently. We will have to throw off another brake on our common progress: the tyranny of the status quo.”
In December, a UN climate conference in Doha, Qatar, agreed to a new commitment period for the Kyoto protocol, a treaty that limits the greenhouse gas output of some developed countries, and affirmed a previous decision to adopt a new global climate pact by 2015.
Full video of the speech
