New York - A special one-day conference will take place on September 24 to be attended by world leaders to discuss climate change, which the United Nations said Tuesday has become more a development and economic issue than just an environmental issue. More than 100 governments have registered to take part in the debate, one day before the UN General Assembly is to open the annual session, allowing leaders of the 192 UN member states to discuss a wide range of political, economic and social issues.
"Climate change is increasingly being seen as a development and economic issue, encompassing a wide array of interests in society," said Richard Kinley, the deputy secretary general of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees the debate.
Kinley said the shift from just environmental to economic worries require the attention of high political leadership, whereas environmental ministers provided the lead in the past to deal with crises.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for the one-day conference to demand leaders focus on climate change issues after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which groups more than 180 governments, issued dire warnings earlier this year that human-made greenhouse gas emissions had accelerated global warming.
The debate in the UN General Assembly on September 24 would contribute to an international conference to be held in Bali, Indonesia, in December to discuss a new Kyoto Protocol for government carbon emissions.
The protocol will expire in 2012, and negotiations for a new document should be complete by 2009.
The UN said human activity would cause more than 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide to be emitted into the atmosphere in 2007, warning that carbon concentration in the atmosphere had increased every year.
