CAIRO: In his opening remarks to the United Nations Climate Change Summit Plenary, Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders to consider the dramatic effects that climate change will give rise to, if immediate action is not taken.
Climate negotiations are proceeding at glacial speed, the UN secretary-general warned in the spotlight in New York ahead of a landmark meeting in Copenhagen, Now is your moment to act. History may not offer us a better chance.
The UN Climate Change Conference, which will take place in Copenhagen next December, is to include the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as the fifth meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. It will also be the largest meeting of world leaders on climate change.
The Kyoto Protocol is an international environmental treaty with the goal of achieving a stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and is a legally binding commitment towards the reduction of gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Ban Ki-moon s words of warning come at a critical time with just two weeks before negotiations for the conference will end.
Reference was also made, during the speech, to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change s (IPCC) “worst-case scenarios, claiming there was less than 10 years to avoid such scenarios.
The IPCC warns that social disruption will be caused by the acceleration of changes seen in key global parameters, such as average surface temperature and ocean and ice sheet dynamics. These changes significantly increase the risk of irreversible climate shifts.
Climate change is also a crucial problem for Egypt, with Cairo suffering from particularly bad land, water and air pollution.
In response to some critics argument that tackling climate change is too expensive, Ban Ki-moon was clear and resolute They are wrong. We will pay an unacceptable price if we do not act now.
Climate change, said to be the pre-eminent geopolitical and economic issue of the 21st century, threatens to exacerbate poverty, destabilize fragile states, topple governments and reverse years of development gains.
In New York, the chiefs of more than 500 global companies called Tuesday for an ambitious, robust and equitable climate change deal, reported AFP.
The business leaders from over 50 countries including Brazil, Britain, China, Japan, Russia and the United States said measures to spur recovery from the global downturn must be environmentally sustainable.
In a Copenhagen Communique, organized as part of a project based at Britain s Cambridge University and backed by Prince Charles, they said, It is critical that we exit this recession in a way that lays the foundation for low-carbon growth and avoids locking us into a high-carbon future, calling for an ambitious, robust and equitable global deal on climate change that responds credibly to the scale and urgency of the crises facing the world today, reported AFP.
Signatories of the Copenhagen Communique include Willie Walsh of British Airways, Richard Branson of Virgin, Nike boss Mark Parker, Shiro Kondo of Japan s Ricoh Company and Naguib Sawiris of Egypt-based Orascom Telecom.
For real progress to be made on the issue of climate change all countries must work towards a common long-term goal, including ambitious emission reductions and commitment to sustainable growth. Perhaps most importantly, any deal must be backed by money and a means to deliver it, to ensure that any proposed solutions do not become empty promises.
A reoccurring theme in Ban Ki-moon s speech were his continual calls to world leaders, imploring them to offer their direct political support and guidance to their climate negotiators, in order to accelerate the pace of negotiations, claiming All countries must do more, now.
Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom, has also echoed the UN secretary-general s call and asked fellow leaders to agree to go, in person, to the vital talks in Copenhagen. Brown goes further, stating he will go to Copenhagen to pursue a framework to succeed the Kyoto protocol, the first head of state to do so.
With the conference fast approaching many commentators are holding little hope. At a recent meeting of the Group of Eight (G8), the world top leaders agreed to halve carbon emissions; however they failed to set specific targets because they did not agree on a base year.
Yet perhaps there is room to be optimistic given that global cooperation seen this year, with countries around the world coordinating financial policy in order to combat the financial crisis.
What remains clear, however, is the price of failure. Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council is of the opinion the future of humanity is at stake.
