United Nations officials gathered in Poland to discuss climate change and the need to address this issue, possibly through a new pact to succeed the Kyoto protocol. The target is to establish targets for greenhouse emissions, which should be completed by December 2009.

The meeting taking place these days in Poland takes place prior to next year’s gathering in Copenhagen , Denmark. Next year is especially important as it is considered the year of the climate change.

“The year between this meeting in Poznan and the meeting in Copenhagen is going to be disproportionately on climate change as it should be in terms of attention of governments of the world,” said Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), one issue the world should focus on is, for example, the energy use in buildings, which accounts for one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions.

The agency stated in a recent report that only 10 out of approximately 4,000 projects in the pipeline of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are designed to curb the use of energy in buildings.

The Poland reunion is expected to create the talk premises for the Copenhagen conference, where world countries are expected to reach an agreement on the successor of the Kyoto protocol, whose first term ends in 2012.