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Top UN climate official resigns

Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate change official, says he will resign after nearly four years in the post.

His departure takes effect from 1 July, five months before 193 countries are due to reconvene in Mexico for another attempt at global deal on climate.

Nations failed to reach a binding deal at the Copenhagen meeting in December.

Mr de Boer told the Associated Press news agency he was announcing his departure now so that a successor could be found before the Mexico meeting.

The former Dutch civil servant was the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As the UN's climate negotiator, he was widely credited with raising the profile of climate change issues.
“ We were about an inch away from a formal agreement. It was basically in our grasp, but it didn't happen... so that was a pity ”
Yvo de Boer

But suspicions and distrust between developing and industrial countries barred the way to a binding accord at the UN's climate change summit in Copenhagen in December.

In a statement, Mr de Boer said: "It was a difficult decision to make, but I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge."

He said the failure to secure a treaty at Copenhagen was unrelated to his decision to quit, and that he had begun looking for a new job last year, before the summit.

Mr De Boer said he will be a consultant on climate and sustainability issues for KPMG, a global accounting firm, and will be associated with several universities.

'Very significant'

He told AP that he believed talks were "on track", although it was uncertain whether a full treaty could be finalised at the next high-level conference in November.

Mr de Boer said the accord reached in Copenhagen, brokered by US President Barack Obama, "was very significant".

But he acknowledged frustration that the deal fell short of the consensus and was merely "noted" rather than formally adopted by all countries.

"We were about an inch away from a formal agreement. It was basically in our grasp, but it didn't happen... so that was a pity," he said.

A different UN climate body - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reviews climate science - has come under fire in recent months for a mistake on the melting of Himalayan glaciers and for referencing "grey literature" - a WWF report which had not been peer-reviewed.

The head of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has rejected calls for his resignation.

In November, hundreds of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, appeared on the web.

CRU maintains one of the world's most important datasets on how global temperatures have changed.

An inquiry is underway to consider whether the e-mail exchanges between researchers show an attempt to manipulate or suppress data "at odds" with scientific practice.
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Published: 2010/02/18 12:35:08 GMT

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