Newsroom Panama has some good news for the country’s hotel industry:
The UN agency UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be holding preparatory meetings for the seventeenth session of the UNFCCC scheduled for South Africa, between November and December 2011, with the acronym COP-17.
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the Convention, said that the offer of a site shows Panama’s commitment to play a significant role in multilateral efforts to combat climate change.
Panama’s Vice President and Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Varela said that the meetings of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term cooperation in the framework of the Convention and one of the Ad Hoc Working Groups on Further Commitments for Annex 1 Parties under the Kyoto Protocol will take place from October 1 to 7 October 2011 in Panama City.
The week long meetings will involve major government negotiating groups to coordinate their positions in the last meeting prior to COP-17 in Durban, South Africa.
Varela said he expected attendance of more than 4000 people among the fovernment delegations of the 195 state parties to the Convention, as well as representatives of NGOs, international organizations and media, which will add at least another 1000.
Five thousand people for preparatory meetings? It took just 55 delegates to draft the United States Constitution. The rest here.