A two-day meeting is underway at the United Nations to try to find effective, global policies to combat global warming. From Environment News Service:
The two day informal debate that opened today is the first devoted exclusively to climate change. Delegates are seeking to translate the growing scientific consensus on the problem into a broad political consensus for action following alarming UN reports earlier this year on its potentially devastating effects.
[UN Secretary General] Ban ki-Moon called for "new thinking" to tackle the challenge, since how it is addressed "will define us, our era, and ultimately, our global legacy." He is convening a high-level meeting on climate change when the new Assembly session starts in September.
Ban highlighted the need for a comprehensive global agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The Kyoto Protocol, the international community's current framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, expires in 2012, and Ban said countries must agree on a successor pact to be ready for ratification by 2009 to allow countries to enact it into law before the Kyoto Protocol expires.
President of the General Assembly Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa spoke of the "cruel irony" of the disproportionate effects of climate change on the countries least responsible for it.
"Greater variations of rainfall, combined with rising sea levels, will lead to more extreme weather, particularly in parts of Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America," she said at the opening of today's meeting. "We therefore have a special responsibility to help those countries most affected to adapt to climate change."
Sunita Narain, director of the Indian Centre for Science and Environment, said the debate over climate change, "is locked in the politics of the past. How to move ahead is the issue at hand."
1 comment:
I had the opportunity of meeting Ban, Ki-moon when he was campaigning for re-election in South Korea 2004. We talked about the pollution conditions in South Korea. He is indeed an informed and caring individual when it comes to the environment and climate change and someone can get the ball running but he needs support. South Korea signed the Kyoto Protocal several years ago. South Korea suffers directly from pollution from China. Enna
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