Yvo de Boer: Cop 16 won’t produce binding agreement

Countries such as China and India will not enter a legally binding agreement at the next United Nations Climate Change conference (Cop16) in Cancun, Mexico at the end of 2010, predicts Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, he does expect crucial progress to be made there.

"The idea for the meeting in Cancun is to reach what I expected for Copenhagen," said De Boer, who is stepping down from his post on July 1. "This would be to deliver a functioning architecture, adopted through decisions that you could then turn into a treaty afterwards. It is not feasible to get this architecture in place as well as finalising a treaty text in the two weeks."

Speaking at a carbon conference in Amsterdam on Wednesday, De Boer said he understood uncertainty is preventing