联合国气候变化事务负责人德波尔将辞职

【英文原文】

U.N.'s Top Climate Official To Resign

The top climate-change official at the United Nations is leaving to become a private consultant, a move that follows the failure of a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen to produce a binding agreement to curb global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Yvo de Boer said he will leave his post as the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change on July 1 to take a job as a climate-change adviser with consulting firm KPMG. His term had been scheduled to end in September.

The failure of the Copenhagen conference to come up with a legally binding global pact has highlighted fissures among nations about which of them should have to spend money to make the biggest cuts in the gases believed to contribute to global warming.

It suggests that the world's biggest emitters are willing to curb their output of those so-called greenhouse-gases only to the extent that they believe doing so will help them in more immediate ways, such as fighting smog and creating jobs. Those economic realities will continue to face Mr. de Boer's successor.

In a statement announcing his departure, Mr. de Boer cast the Copenhagen result in an optimistic light. 'Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming,' he said. A spokeswoman for Mr. de Boer said he was unavailable for additional comment.

'It's a very difficult period,' Janos Pasztor, head of the climate-change team for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who will name Mr. de Boer's successor, said in an interview. 'It doesn't matter what a senior U.N. civil servant does, ultimately,' he said. If governments are 'not ready to sign off on an agreement, then they will not sign off on an agreement.'

Mr. de Boer's exit comes as the U.N.'s push for a global crackdown on greenhouse-gas emissions faces mounting difficulties. A string of recent revelations about questionable practices and outright mistakes by scientists who contributed to a big 2007 U.N. climate-science report has led some politicians to advocate slowing the push for legislation that would cap greenhouse-gas emissions. Among those mistakes: The 2007 report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035, a claim the IPCC now says was inaccurate.

As U.N.-sponsored organizations, the IPCC and the UNFCCC are linked. The IPCC's mission is to provide assessments of climate science for use in policymaking -- including policies pursued by the U.N. climate-policy body, which Mr. de Boer headed.

Mr. de Boer could have asked Mr. Ban to appoint him to another term. 'We never came to that point,' Mr. Pasztor said. Asked whether Mr. Ban would have reappointed Mr. de Boer, Mr. Pasztor said: 'That we don't know.'

Mr. de Boer worked before coming to the U.N. as deputy director general of the environmental ministry of the Netherlands. He also previously worked as an adviser to the Chinese government and to the World Bank. KPMG said it was hiring Mr. de Boer for a global job 'advising business, governments and other organizations on sustainability issues.' The firm said it and many of its clients regard climate change as an increasingly important business issue.

Mr. Ban will begin looking for a successor for Mr. de Boer 'extremely quickly,' said Mr. Pasztor, who said he didn't know who might be considered.

【中文译文】

联合国负责气候变化的最高官员德波尔(Yvo de Boer)将辞职到私营企业做顾问。在此之前，联合国哥本哈根气候峰会未能达成一份遏制全球温室气体排放的约束性协议。

德波尔说，他将于7月1日辞去《联合国气候变化框架公约》(UNFCCC)执行秘书一职，到咨询公司毕马威(KPMG)担任气候变化顾问。按照先前计划，他的任期将在9月份结束。

德波尔去年出席哥本哈根气候变化大会哥本哈根大会未能产生一份具有法律约束力的协议，彰显各国之间对于谁应当花钱以最大幅度减少温室气体排放，存在较大的分歧。

会议揭示出，世界最大的几个温室气体排放国只有在它们认为能够得到更为直接的好处（如减少烟尘、创造就业）时，才会愿意抑制温室气体的排放。这些经济上的现实将继续摆在德波尔继任者的面前。

在一份宣布离职的声明中，德波尔对哥本哈根会议的结果表示了乐观态度。他说，哥本哈根虽然没有为我们提供一份法律上的清晰协议，但其中的政治决心和迈向一个低碳世界的决心，却是势不可当的。德波尔的一位发言人表示，德波尔不会发表更多评论。

联合国秘书长潘基文的气候变化团队负责人帕兹托(Janos Pasztor)将提名德波尔的继任者。他在接受采访时说，这是一个非常艰难的时期；联合国一位高级公务员做什么最终都不重要，如果各国政府不准备敲定一份协议，那么它们就不会敲定一份协议。

德波尔离任，正值联合国在全球范围内遏制温室气体排放的努力面临重重困难之时。近期，参与撰写联合国2007年一份重要气候科学报告的科学家被接连曝出可疑行为和错误，让一些政界人士呼吁减缓抑制温室气体排放的立法进程。诸多错误中的一个是，这份由联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)出具的报告说，喜马拉雅冰川可能会在2035年以前消失，而现在IPCC称这种说法并不准确。

IPCC和UNFCCC都是联合国发起的机构，两者之间存在关联。IPCC的使命是提供对气候科学研究成果的评估，以用于指导政策制定，包括德波尔所领导的UNFCCC秘书处这个联合国气候政策机构所试图制定的政策。

德波尔本来可以要求潘基文提名他连任。帕兹托说，我们从来没有到过这一步。被问到如果德波尔不辞职潘基文是否会提名他连任时，帕兹托表示，这个我们就不知道了。

在进入联合国工作以前，德布尔曾任荷兰环境部副部长。他还曾担任过中国政府和世界银行顾问。毕马威表示，将聘请德波尔担任一个全球职位，向企业、政府和其他组织在可持续发展方面提供咨询。毕马威表示，它自己和许多客户都将气候变化视为一个越来越重要的商业问题。

帕兹托表示，潘基文将很快开始寻找德波尔的继任者，但不知道谁可能是考虑人选。