Successful Leadership On Global Warming
I congratulate the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his success in taking a bold initiative to bring global leaders together on 24th September 2007, before the opening of the 62 General Assembly, for one day meeting to discuss global warming phenomenon. It was an impressive gatherings of people, from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, Arti Mehra, Mayor of New Delhi, to Al Gore, Former United States Vice-President and present world environment champion; a real break through, indeed, on our efforts to deal with Climate Change. Participants included 40 heads of State or government, 9 deputy prime ministers and vice presidents and 70 cabinet ministers from all over the world come together to discuss under three important theme: mitigation, innovating a climate-friendly world through new technology; and financing the response to climate change. It is true what Al Gore said. The old divide between North and South, between developed and developing countries is now obsolete and business cannot continue as usual. At the end of the session at the UN Headquarters in New York, the leaders agreed to take appropriate actions by working together in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, focusing on clean technologies and making massive economic change needed to cut global emissions from industries. Women leaders attended the meeting, gave useful ideas on how we should move ahead on this: German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, suggested that a global carbon-trading scheme, which places a price on industries’ carbon-dioxide emissions, should play a central role in future attempts to fight global warming; Gro-Harlem Brundtland of Norway, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, and Mitchelle Bachelet, President of Chile, led important plenary discussions on “Mitigation”; United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested that the world must find ways to “transcend” fossil fuels in the search for clean, renewable alternatives; and Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth International gave advice to industrialized countries to cut carbon-dioxide emissions to give more “wiggle rooms” for developing countries to act. Ban Ki-moon succeeded in his aim to “jump-start” and build-up of political support as a momentum for the Bali December 2007’ Climate Change Negotiation. As host, Indonesian President Sosilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that success of the meeting is when we have agreements on what action to take between now until 2012, the end of the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, and action afterwards. He said that the Bali meeting must yield a “new roadmap” that spells out what developed and developing countries agree to do to save humankind and our planet from the looming tragedy of climate change. Ban Ki-moon was certain that we know enough to act, but warned that what we do not have is time.
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Tackling Effects of Global Warming: Grass-roots Solutions
We have moved forward a little bit in tackling the effects of global warming when 1700 community activists from 62 countries agreed on the 12-Month Framework for Action on Climate Change. Members of the NGOs and civil societies met last week at the United Nations’ organized Conference focusing on,“Climate Change: How It Affects Us All”. It is good timing for the grass-roots solutions before the problems of global warming become irreversible. The agreed 12-Month Framework for Action at grass-roots level surely is a major step forward to protect our future ecosystems and infrastructures. Since we share one Planet Earth, leaders of each community will have to find appropriate action locally, aiming to stop people’s behavior which will end up polluting the Earth’s environment. Governments and industrial leaders have begun to take concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas or to find alternative sources of energy. Financial and development institutions give incentives to foster climate-friendly technologies towards the eventual phase-out of fossil fuels and nuclear-based technologies. Each community should make their own action plan to face the severity of impact of climate change, which is different from one community to the other, depending on geography and location. For example, sea level rise will affect the livelihood of the people who live along coastal areas or on small islands more than those living on mountain terrains, while the melting of the Himalayan glaciers will affect people in Central and East Asia more than people living in South America. This agreed Framework For Grass-roots Action has given us hope in that, together, we can combat global climate change. We are all responsible to change our own bad habit of excessive consumption, and bad practice of waste of clean water and other precious natural resources. Our positive action can prevent disaster for ourselves and for billions of other people who will face famine, mass dislocations and death that will come from global warming and climate change. This successful last week conference has increased the momentum leading up to the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Meeting to address the leadership challenge of climate change, which is scheduled for 24 September in New York, andthe United Nations Climate Change Conference at Nusa Dua in Bali from 3-14 December 2007.
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