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UN climate change summit begins, to plan out $100-billion ‘green fund’
Representatives from 194 countries on Monday came together in Warsaw for the United Nations Climate Change Conference to thrash out a deal for reduction in carbon emissions and contribution to a global fund for mitigation measures.
Representatives from 194 countries on Monday came together in Warsaw for the United Nations Climate Change Conference to thrash out a deal for reduction in carbon emissions and contribution to a global fund for mitigation measures.
The 19th session of the Conference of Parties (COP 19) under the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) will go on for 12 days to draw the map for a new deal to be signed in 2020 regarding global warming/climate change.
Leading the Indian delegation at the conference is Ravi Shankar Prasad, joint secretary (climate change) at the Union ministry of environment and forests.
“The focus this time is on adaptation measures, finance vis-à-vis the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and technology transfer for mitigation to fight climate change,” Prasad told Hindustan Times.
“We are looking at how these decisions can be implemented and taken further.”
Pointing out that the promised $100-billion GCF was not yet operational, he said, “We are asking when and how are the countries going to work out the modalities and honour the commitments.”
Earlier in the day, UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres, said in her opening address, “We must launch the construction of a mechanism that helps vulnerable populations to respond to the unanticipated effects of climate change. We must deliver an effective path to pre-2020 ambition, and develop further clarity for elements of the new agreement that will shape the post-2020 global climate, economic and development agendas.”
She said climate change was a reality that affected the whole of humanity.
“There are not two sides, but the whole of humanity. There are no winners and losers, we all either win or lose in the future we make for ourselves,” Figueres said.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pointed out that each of last three decades had been warmer compared to others since 1870. He said now was time to come up with an immediate work plan.
An IPCC report published in September-end had claimed that scientists were surer than ever that climate change was a man-made problem.
