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From 6 July 2006, a graphic version of the current edition is available at the Daily News Online web site.

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The Director for the Department of Meteorological Services, Mr Phetolo Phage said during a stakeholder consultative meeting Tuesday that the 28 th Convention will be held from the 4th-13th June this year in Germany.

He said it was very important for Botswana to participate in the upcoming convention because in future the country is going to be a major producer of carbon dioxide and other gases.

This is due to the fact that there is a lot of coal in this country and because of the upcoming major projects such as Mmamabula power plant that would be producing a lot of fumes. he said.

He said the aim of the workshop was to invite ideas about the programmes and activities that the stakeholders would like to be presented at the 28th convention .

The Chief Meteorologist for the Department of Meteorological Services, Mr David Lesolle said the convention would be divided into four key agenda items.

In one of these agenda items there is the Nairobi Work Programme (NWP) on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change.

Under this agenda, the participants will discuss, among other things, the possible ways of dealing with emissions from deforestation in developing countries and the approaches to encourage action on such issues, he said.

Mr Lesolle said other issues to be discussed include development and transfer technologies and capacity building for developing countries under the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol.

He said the meeting would also discuss the strategies that could be used by the parties to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperation action in the present up to and beyond 2012.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) was formed as an international treaty over a decade ago to come up with ways on what could be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases that are inevitable.

The parties of this Convention agree to take climate change into account in such matters as agriculture, industry, energy, natural resources, and activities involving seacoasts.

More recently, a number of nations have approved an addition to the treaty hence the Kyoto Protocol, which has more powerful and legally binding measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

The UNFCCC established two subsidiary bodies; the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) that give advice to the Conference of the Parties (COP).

The SBSTAs task is to provide the COP with advice on scientific, technological and methodological matters.

Two key areas of work in this regard are promoting the development and transfer of environmentally friendly technologies, and conducting technical work to improve the guidelines for preparing national communications and emission inventories.

The SBI on the other hand gives advice to the COP on all matters concerning the implementation of the Convention.

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