Accra Talks final day press conference

Briefing the media on the final day of the Talks, Yvo de Boer gave an upbeat assessment of progress made: "We're still on track, the process has speeded up and governments are becoming very serious about negotiating a result in Copenhagen."

The debate on the important topic of deforestation and forest conservation, he said, had resulted in countries expressing the clear desire for this issue to be part of a Copenhagen agreement.

Further important discussions focused on what can be done to improve the clean development mechanism (CDM). Mr. de Boer cited insufficient investment in Africa as one of the shortcomings of the CDM now being addressed. On the controversial issue of sectoral approaches, he said that a constructive debate had made it clear that sectoral approaches were not about imposing targets on developing countries.

The absolute highlight of the session, Mr. de Boer said, had been the mandate given by governments to the Chair of the working group on long-term cooperative action to compile proposals made so far and to be made in the coming weeks.

As a result of this mandate, the achievement of the Accra meeting had been in "providing the basis for real negotiations to begin in Poznań."