UN climate chief resigns

Yvo de Boer has announced his resignation as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC), with effect from 1 July 2010. The former director general of the Dutch Environment Ministry will be joining consultancy group KPMG as global adviser on climate change and sustainability, as well as working with the academic sector. The July handover means that de Boer can still work on helping negotiations ahead of the next conference of the parties to the convention (COP-16), due to take place in Mexico in November. Acknowledging the results of December 2010's COP-15, held in Copenhagen, which ended without consensus, de Boer said that the political commitment and sense of direction towards lower carbon emissions was nevertheless now overwhelming. "I have always maintained that while governments provide the necessary policy framework, the real solutions must come from business," he said, adding "This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and now I have the chance to help make this happen." de Boer has headed the Bonn, Germany-based secretariat of the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol since 2006.