Poland defends business involvement in climate talks

Polish environment minister Marcin Korolec on Thursday defended that it was a transparent process to involve business into the annual United Nations climate talks in Warsaw, amid criticism that the coal-reliant country was pursuing its own national agenda. Since the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or COP19, kicked off on Monday, the host country was under the spotlight for possibly 'hijacking' global climate efforts by arranging a coal summit in parallel to the conference and inviting industries with heavy pollution to sponsor the conference. By inviting the business community into climate debates, the conference became very broad and inclusive, Korolec said in a press conference, who also serves as the president of the COP19. "Polish case makes an excellent example. The coupling of emission reduction and GDP growth is the best score in the framework of the convention," he added. He insisted that the process of getting sponsorship was transparent and that his government had invited all possible companies to help. According to Korolec, the participants for a lunch debate during high-level meetings next week would include UN Secretary -General Ban Ki-moon and ministers, corporation CEOs and NGO representations. It would be the first time for such a debate in the history of UN climate talks in the past 19 years, for the sake for "transparency" and "inclusiveness", he said. The two-week-long conference was scheduled to focus on finance issues and the loss and damage mechanism, as well as to lay the groundwork for a new global climate pact to be signed in 2015.