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.

Filed under Environment, United Nations, World Affairs |