Sir, As the world’s governments meet at the UNFCCC 13th conference of the Parties in Bali (Dec 3-14) and the third meeting of parties of the Kyoto Protocol — the most critical UN meeting on climate change to date — we urge strong and unequivocal political leadership to tackle climate change and secure the safety of our planet.

This month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we are on the brink of committing the world to devastating climate change. This is already having a serious impact on the world’s poorest people — who have done least to cause the problem. The world is now looking to its leaders to show that they have listened to the scientists’ clear message and are prepared to make serious endeavours to tackle the problem — and Bali is the critical moment for them to act.

The Bali meeting must agree a clear mandate to launch negotiations for a new “global deal” to build on the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol. A new deal must be agreed by 2009 and be in place by 2012 — and it must be sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases peak and begin to fall well before 2020.

Critically, any new climate deal must include a commitment by the industrialised nations to adopt binding targets to cut their emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels. It must also provide clear incentives — through an improved carbon market and measures to facilitate technology transfer and promote clean-energy investments — to help the larger developing countries to shift their growth on to a low-carbon pathway and include a mechanism for reducing net deforestation to at least zero. Finally, there must also be a fair deal on adaptation for the most vulnerable developing countries.

We have a limited window of opportunity to stop catastrophic climate change and develop a new one-planet future for our environment and humanity. The deadlock over climate-change policy must be broken. The eyes of the world are on our leaders — and we urge them to act now to protect the planet’s future.

Jim Leape

WWF International

Dr Gerd Leipold

Greenpeace International

Jeremy Hobbs

Oxfam International

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