New Zealand Trade Minister and Minister for Climate Change Issues Tim Groser said Wednesday he is to discuss the building of an "effective and fairer" international climate regime at the third Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin, Germany, next week.
The high-level gathering aimed to give political guidance to the United Nations climate change negotiations in the lead up to the next major meeting, to be held in Doha, Qatar, in December.
"I am looking forward to meeting with my international climate change counterparts to discuss how we move the negotiations forward towards a more effective and fairer international climate regime," Groser said in a statement.
"Countries have made pledges to take action to address climate change after 2012, some under the Kyoto Protocol. We need to consider the actions all countries will take to fulfill those pledges while we negotiate a longer term climate change agreement that all countries are part of."
This year's gathering, on July 16 and 17, is titled Matching Ambition with Action and will focus on the ambition gap between the targets set and what actually needs to be done to meet the 2 degrees centigrade target rise in global temperatures, and the new climate treaty to be negotiated by 2015 and implemented from 2020.
In Berlin, Groser would also meet with German government officials and businesses.
"We are beginning to see a cluster of German investments in New Zealand's agri-business sector. It's important to keep up momentum here - and to look at other areas, such as clean technologies, where we might also build links," he said.
Groser would also visit Moscow, where he would discuss progress on the free trade agreement negotiations underway between New Zealand and the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union.
