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Copenhagen Fallout

Copenhagen is over and the delegates are slowly filtering home. Here are some of the best post-conference quotes.

See also: Copenhagen accord emerges – climate agreement is seen as a small, but necessary, step forward.

“Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down these talks. Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries.”

Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, comments on talks he believes were “at best flawed and at worst chaotic” (BBC).

“For the first time, we have an agreement that requires all of the world’s carbon emitters to actually deal with their carbon emissions and start the process of reducing them.”

Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice talks to CTV about “a turning point in history”.

“It was a conference where the nations of the world, for a whole range of reasons, spent less time negotiating than they should have.”

Australia’s Climate Change Minister Penny Wong (The Australian).

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    Sidney Draggan said:

    Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, said just before the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change in December 2009, “Climate change is the leading ecologic, economic and geopolitical issue of the 21st Century and has even the potential to rewrite the global equation for prosperity, development and peace.” After this promising Summit, there was generally a feeling of disappointment worldwide over its poor outcome. The major disappointment was the putative failure of the Conference to reach a binding agreement to deal with climate change, especially that the 191 countries, including an unprecedented number of heads of state, were expected to agree in Copenhagen to set long-term climate change objectives and common emission reduction targets, amongst others. The post-Copenhagen era calls for the reinvention of both approaches and practices with regard to research, innovation and policy. The International Conference on Climate Change, Agri-Food, Fisheries and Ecosystems: Reinventing Research, Innovation, and Policy Agendas for Environmentally- and Socially-Balanced Growth will be a golden opportunity to stimulate debate and initiatives in this direction.

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