Environment     

SA to host BASIC ministerial climate change meeting

Xinhua, June 27, 2013

• South Africa will host the 15th BASIC Ministerial Climate Change Meeting beginning from Wednesday in Cape Town, the Department of Environmental Affairs announced.

  The meeting will bring together relevant ministers from the BASIC Group of countries, namely Brazil, South Africa, India and China on June 26-28, said the department.

  They have been meeting regularly on the margins of the various sessions under the United Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

  "This BASIC meeting will provide Ministers and senior negotiators with an opportunity for strategic discussion on key issues and dynamics that have emerged from the negotiations and informal consultations that have taken place thus far," the department said.

  The meeting in Cape Town will be the second BASIC meeting in 2013. The first meeting was held in Chennai in India.

  In addition, this meeting follows the recently concluded UNFCCC meeting in Bonn where negotiations under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) were prominent.

  The ADP is the forum for negotiation of a protocol, legal instrument, or agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention, applicable to all parties as agreed at the 17th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Durban in 2011.

  The objective is for this work to be completed by 2015.

  The ministers will use the BASIC platform to discuss the Bonn outcomes and further coordinate their positions for the 2015 agreement, according to the department.

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