This
forms part of the First UN Environmental Assembly (UNEA) underway in Nairobi,
Kenya to mark a historic milestone in UNEP’s 43-year history.
UNEA
is the newly constituted UN high-level platform for decision making on environment
that is tasked to chart a new course in the way the international community
addresses environmental sustainability challenges.
"The
convening of the first UNEA session in Nairobi - home of UNEP and the often
referred to environment capital of the world - represents a
coming-of-age for the global environment community,” said Mr. Achim Steiner, UN
Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme
(UNEP).
The
symposium offers a space for African civil society to articulate climate-friendly
resolutions that protect the livelihood of vulnerable communities.
Secretary-General
of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, Mithika Mwenda, has noted that the
changing climate is the root cause of poverty.
“We
depend on rain-fed agriculture and that woman in the village plants her crop,
they geminate, but because of the erratic nature of rainfall as a result of
climate change, that maize will not mature and those are the challenges that
our people have been going through,” he observed.
He
is worried the effects of climate change will affect the attainment of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The
challenge, according to Mithika, is to cap global emissions; enable people in
developing countries have a future; get equitable, all inclusive and
universally accepted Climate Change agreement in 2015.
“We
cannot ask poor people and developing countries to bear the burden of the
challenge,” he stated.
A
green economy is an economy that promotes sustainable human wellbeing and
social equity, whilst significantly reducing environmental risks.
The
industrialized countries must therefore make financing available for poor
countries to mitigate the effects of climate change, said he PACJA
Secretary-General.
“There
is no doubt that in order for poor countries and those in Africa particularly
to address climate change adequately and sufficiently, they need to be
facilitated with adequate finance from industrialized countries,” said Mithika.
The Green Climate Fund was set up by the UN as a mechanism to
transfer money from the developed world to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate
change.
As much as $15 billion is expected
to be raised by the end of 2014 to start financing projects and developing
nations want industrialized countries to show how they intend to reach the $100
billion a year they pledged to deliver by 2020.
“The
UN process must work for Africa and climate change should become an urgent
political issue in which governments, international agencies must be challenged,”
Mithika enjoined.
The
first session of the UNEA under the theme: “A
Life of Dignity for All” will define the UNEP’s ability to address the
greatest environmental challenges facing the world today and in the future and
provide inputs to the definition of the post-2015 development agenda – ensuring
that environmental concerns are reflected and integrated into post-2015/Sustainable
Development Goals framework.
The
UN Under-Secretary-General says that despite some setbacks, notably in the
climate change negotiations, there is broad consensus today that environmental
protection requires addressing the relationship between humanity and nature.
"Now
more than ever, it has become increasingly clear that the dichotomy between
environmental sustainability and economic and social development should be
overcome through the careful management of natural resources as the keystone of
a prosperous and stable society,” said Mr. Steiner. “In this new forum, UNEP
and its partners will be able to provide governments and other policymakers
with the science, policy options and platform, for international cooperation to
more effectively address the environmental dimension of sustainable
development." 
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