New UN Climate Chief Cites "Screaming" Threat of Disasters
Disasters show 'screaming' need for action - climate chief
Yahoo! Inc., Sept. 2, 2010
GENEVA
(AFP) – UN climate chief Christiana Figueres on Thursday warned that a
string of weather calamities showed the deepening urgency to forge a
breakthrough deal on global warming this year.
Speaking
before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has
helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said floods in Pakistan,
fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup
call.
"The
news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate
disasters is not the future that we want," Figueres, newly-appointed
executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), told reporters.
"Science
will show whether and how those events are related to climate change
caused by humanity's greenhouse-gas emissions, but the point is clear:
We cannot afford to face escalating disasters of that kind."
Figueres
called on governments to agree on "four or five" major planks at
year-end UNFCCC talks in Cancun, Mexico, which would then serve as a
platform for a 2012 global pact on climate.
"We
read it that countries are assuming their responsibility, that they're
being realistic, that they're being productive, that they're being
constructive and that they're counting on very clear outcomes from
Cancun," she said.
One of the issues in Cancun will be funding.
"The
regulation of the financial issues is a key precondition for the
successful conclusion of the climate negotiations in Cancun," said Swiss
Environment Minister Moritz Leuenberger, in a speech to open the talks.
Hundreds
of billions of dollars are needed to prevent future emissions of
greenhouse gases by emerging economies and help poor countries facing
worsening drought, flood, storms and rising seas.
The
Geneva talks, running until Friday, gather more than 40 countries at
ministerial level, including big advanced economies, emerging giants and
countries representative of poor nations.
The
tentative goal is to establish a "dialogue" on the broad lines of how
to gear up as much as 100 billion dollars a years by 2020.
The
many questions include the resources of this fund, the role of the
private and public sector and how the money would be administered.
On
Friday, Dutch Environment Minister Tineke Huizinga will unveil a
website detailing action so far on "fast-track" finance of 30 billion
dollars that has been promised over the next three years.
Both
are the key pledges made by rich countries at the UN climate summit in
Copenhagen last December, an event that bickering, textual wrangling and
finger-pointing brought to within an inch of catastrophe.
Mistrust festers today, especially among developing countries eyeing the few solid promises made at that ill-fated meeting.
Developing
countries in particular want assurances that the 30 billion dollars in
short-term finance will come from new sources and is not siphoned off
from development aid or existing budgets, said Oxfam policy advisor
Romain Benicchio.
Switzerland and Mexico, co-hosting the meeting, insist the Geneva talks do not constitute the gathering of a cosy elite.
Instead,
they say, the outcome will feed into the UN process, deemed the sole
valid vehicle, despite its many problems, for dealing with the climate
peril.
The 194-nation UNFCCC forum next meets in Tianjin, China, in October followed in Cancun from November 29-December 10.
After the traumatic outcome of Copenhagen, expectations have been dialled down.
At
best, say experts, Cancun will deliver good progress on the main
issues, but the world will have to wait for another year before a draft
treaty sees daylight.
If
all goes well, the accord would take effect beyond 2012, after present
commitments under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol expire, setting down a
charter for drastically curbing man-made greenhouse gas emissions and
building financial support.
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