Opening speech UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen

Norway regrets the fact that we won’t get a comprehensive legally binding agreement in Copenhagen. However, given the circumstances, we support the approach for this meeting, which has been launched by the Danish COP presidency. This is not an excuse for not being bold and ambitious here in Copenhagen,- and we must seize the political momentum leading up to this meeting for taking firm and necessary climate actions now. In a political agreement, we must confirm our global goal for a 2 degree target, and the necessary measures that science tells us to carry out for getting there. Hence, the agreement has to include the necessary 2050 goal and adequate and ambitious collective commitments for 2020 reductions, where all countries, except for the least developed, participate. Developed countries have to take the lead, and provide adequate and predictable financial support for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, in both the short and the long term.

Norway has unconditionally signed up for a 30 per cent reduction target in 2020, which we are ready to increase to 40 per cent as part of an ambitious agreement where all major emitting countries participate adequately. Norway will become carbon neutral in 2030. This, however, cannot be done without an extensive carbon market, and
the use of existing and further developed mechanisms, which will ensure substantial financial flows from industrialized countries to developing countries.

Hence, Norway is committed to the Kyoto protocol and its principles, but we firmly believe that if we are to tackle our common climate challenge our final agreement has to include all major emitters. Norway is flexible as to whether this agreement should include one or more protocols. Necessary actions now means that the Copenhagen meeting must send a strong signal to both IMO and ICAO, that these sectors have to take their adequate share of the necessary global emission reduction target for 2020, and that these bodies must increase their efforts and speed up their implementation of such targets immediately after Copenhagen.

Action now also means that we here in Copenhagen need commitments and decisions that enable a quick start on the mechanism for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Reliable estimations tell us that a 25 percent reduction in annual global deforestations rates may be achievable by 2015, if 15-25 billion Euros are made available in the 2010-2015 period. This includes financial support through result based incentives, and could deliver 7 billion tones of emission reductions, by far the greatest mitigation potential in the period.

Finally, the outcome of Copenhagen must be comprehensive and transparent, in the sense that the agreement has to include adequate measures for ensuring an international monitoring of whether the steps taken actually lead us in the right direction in accordance with our common commitments. The agreement further has to set a clear procedure and timetable for the turning of this agreement into a legally binding instrument.