The UN’s top climate change official, Christiana
Figueres says following the successful conclusion of the historic Paris Climate
Change Agreement last year, governments are leaving behind the phase of
negotiations and entering a new era of collaboration.
The meeting comes weeks after 176 countries and the EU
signed the historic Paris Climate Change Agreement clinched last year in
France, and is a key planning event for the upcoming Climate Change Conference
in Marrakech in November.
Addressing delegates in the opening plenary of the UN
Climate Change Conference in Bonn, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres said: “The whole world is
united in its commitment to the global goals embodied in the Paris Agreement,
as well as to the means by which to achieve them.
Most importantly, with the adoption of the Sustainable
Development Goals, you have opened the opportunity to meet the climate change
challenge to a great extent by fulfilling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development.”
French Environment Minister and President of COP 21, Ségolène
Royal said the final day of the Paris conference, when the agreement was
concluded, had shown the world that the international community is capable of
unifying to respond to the global challenge of climate and to embark on the
path of sustainable development.
“Since the conclusion of the Paris Agreement, our
priority is to build on the ambitious, balanced and fair compromises which were
reached last December, in order to reinforce action on the ground. The
foundations have been laid, it is now up to us build our common house. I call
on you to be builders and facilitators,” she said.
Salaheddine Mezouar, the incoming President of the UN
Climate Change Conference in Marrakech (COP22) and Morocco’s Foreign Minister, has
outlined the key objectives of the meeting this November.
“Our ambition for COP 22 is to contribute to the
adoption of the procedures and mechanisms to allow the Paris Agreement to be
operationalized, and the adoption of an action plan for the pre-2020 period,
covering mitigation, adaptation and finance, and to step up capacity building,
technology transfer and transparency,” he said.
Stressing the importance of climate finance, Mr. Mezouar said COP22 would also be an occasion to
draw up a road map for concrete and predictable provision of the USD 100
billion governments have agreed will be mobilized for developing countries to
green their economies and adapt to climate change.
To this end, he suggested that governments, along with
public and private financial institutions, consider the creation of a “Fast
Track Facility” for climate finance.
Following the opening of the UN Climate Change
Conference in Bonn, holding from 16–26 May, Ms. Figueres and the present and
incoming COP Presidents planted a tree on the premises of the UN, to
commemorate the signing of the Paris Agreement and to mark Earth Day 2016.
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