The United Nations' environment chief has slammed plans by the world's richest nations to put off a global treaty on climate change to 2020, saying the proposals were "very high risk".
Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN environment program, said postponing an agreement – which was meant to be signed in 2013 – to the end of this decade was a "political choice" rather than one based on science.
The Guardian revealed this week that most of the world's rich economies have quietly decided to shelve plans for a global agreement on climate change to take effect within the next few years, instead pushing for an agreement by the end of 2015 or 2016, and coming into effect until 2020. Scientists and economists have said this plan risks leading to catastrophic and irreversible climate change.
Steiner is the first senior UN official to speak out against the plans, which will be aired next week at the latest round of UN climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa.
He said: "Those countries that are currently talking about deferring an agreement [to come into force] in 2020 are essentially saying we are taking you from high risk to very high risk in terms of the effects of global warming. This is a choice – a political choice. Our role, working with the scientific community, is to bring to the attention of the global public that this is the risk that policymakers and governments will expose us to."
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