SEVILLE, Spain—Global climate negotiations should remain the responsibility of the United Nations, even if the Copenhagen climate summit in December didn't provide a breakthrough, said Achim Steiner, U.N. undersecretary general and executive director of the U.N. environment program.
"Neither the G-20 nor the major [greenhouse-gas] emitters forum nor any other forum managed to reach any form of agreement in the run-up to Copenhagen," Mr. Steiner said in an interview during a meeting of European Union energy and environment ministers this weekend. "So I think one has to be careful to assume that another forum will deliver something that cannot be negotiated in the context of the U.N. framework convention," he said.
Mr. Steiner added that countries won't happily accept the dictate of a few nations on issues that touch their future economic and national sovereignty.
"We do have to come back to the setting of 190-plus nations on this planet who have to work together," he said.
Nevertheless, "a lot of soul-searching" needed to be done in terms of the negotiation process, the U.N. undersecretary said. If Copenhagen was a "catharsis," then the coming 12 months are an opportunity to "correct" what went wrong during the summit, Mr. Steiner said.
Many governments are discussing what should be done so concrete steps follow the nonbinding Copenhagen accord, he said, among them Brazil, India, China and South Africa, which plan to meet in India on Jan. 24 to establish their formal position.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been in contact with a number of heads of state to ensure they follow through on commitments made in Copenhagen so that a binding agreement can be reached at an U.N. conference at the end of the year in Mexico, Mr. Steiner said.
Following the nonbinding Copenhagen accord, countries have until Jan. 31 to bring in their firm commitments for emission reduction and financial aid in the case of industrialized nations, and for voluntary actions against climate change in the case of developing nations.
Since the U.S. and China were among the key brokers of the Copenhagen accord, if they were to fail to bring in concrete proposals by Jan. 31, "it would be a clear sign that something would have gone badly wrong," Mr. Steiner added.