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Global community must act on addressing climate concerns or face doom, warns Rupiah

Global community must act on addressing climate concerns or face doom, warns Rupiah
Written by Larry Moonze
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 6:01:29 PM

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda has said the global community has a choice to save humanity or consign its future to doom. And British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has insisted on a climate finance agreement amounting to US $100 billion a year by 2020.

Before the United Nations General Assembly high-level session on climate change in New York on Tuesday, President Banda said the Copenhagen conference on climate change due in December provided an important opportunity for the global community to put in place effective measures to address and avert severe impacts that threatened sustainable development.

"Zambia like most developing countries is vulnerable and is already experiencing adverse effects of climate change," he said. "This December, we have to make a choice: To act responsibly as a united global community and provide a firm ground to safeguard our common good or stick to traditional positions and negotiating tactics and consign our future and that of our children to doom."

He said the right choice included an affective adaptation framework which reduced developing countries' risks to the adverse effects of climate change.

"However, an adaptation framework will not be enough if we do not address the root cause of green house gas emissions," President Banda said. "It is therefore, important that developed countries take the lead in agreeing upon ambitious legally binding emission reduction targets consistent with scientific advice while developing countries will require support from the global community to adopt appropriate actions."

He said huge amounts of financial and other resources should be made readily available to the most vulnerable developing countries to help them finance adaptation and mitigation programmes.

President Banda said those funds must be additional to the Official Development Assistance (ODA).

"In addition a transparent financial mechanism should be put in place so that deserving vulnerable countries can easily access the funds," he said. "Access to technology for the poor and most vulnerable countries is also crucial. Therefore, the Copenhagen conference should address the traditional barriers to technology such as cost and intellectual property rights."

President Banda said support should also be extended to capacity building to enable people especially local communities who were at high risk learn new ways of responding to the challenges.

And UK Premier Brown said under the auspices of the UN, leaders must agree to set the world on a low-carbon path.

He said global emissions must be cut to at least half of 1990 levels by 2050.

"So this must be our Copenhagen goal. But we will not achieve it unless the deal we make is fair," Prime Minister Brown said. "Recognising the right of poor countries to develop and to lift their people out of poverty and to leave room for developing countries to grow, developed countries have committed to reducing their own emissions by at least eighty per cent by 2050."

He said the next stage was to agree a climate finance partnership that would held developing countries both adapt to climate change and shift to low-carbon growth themselves.

"I suggested [in June] a working figure of 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 and I have been gratified by the response that this proposal has received," said Prime Minister Brown. "As global leaders we have an immense responsibility to the people that we represent today and to the generations that will follow. But we also have a unique opportunity to avoid the human environmental catastrophe of unchecked climate change by securing in Copenhagen an agreement that is ambitious, effective and fair. The world's people will not forgive us if we fail. So with common will, with imagination and with a willingness to compromise, let us now commit ourselves to success."
CK

Labels: CLIMATE CHANGE, GORDON BROWN, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 5:02 PM