UN General Assembly Opens With Focus on Climate

UN General Assembly Opens With Focus on Climate

UN General Assembly Opens With Focus on Climate

NEW YORK, New York, September 18, 2007 (ENS) - Climate change, financing for development, the Millennium Development Goals, management reform and counter-terrorism should all receive priority attention from the General Assembly over the next year, said the incoming president Srgjan Kerim today as he opened its 62nd session.

Previewing next Monday's high-level UN meeting on climate change, which will be attended by heads of state from around the world, Kerim called on all 192 UN member governments to dedicate themselves to devising a "collaborative, global response" to the Earth's warming climate. He said climate change is now causing developmental as well as environmental problems.

Incoming UN General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim gavels his first session to order. (Photo courtesy UN)

"The science has spoken; the time for action has come," he said, adding that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change should remain at the center of international action.

Kerim, who is from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, served as his country's ambassador to the United Nations from 2001 to 2003 and in several other positions with his national government.

"More than ever before, global challenges demand multilateral solutions," he said. "The United Nations is the appropriate multilateral forum to take action. That is why the revitalization of this General Assembly deserves our highest attention."

The high-level meeting on climate change will be convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who today called for "strength and reassurance" to face the growing demands placed on the United Nations.

"The world turns to us, increasingly to solve more and more problems," said Ban. "And the problems seem to grow ever more complex ?from the conflict in Darfur to the impact of climate change on our planet."

Ban today announced that 154 speakers, including some 80 heads of state or government, will participate in the high-level dialogue on climate change.

"This will be an informal event where the leaders of the world come together, with a renewed sense of commitment, to tackle a problem that faces each one of us - and above all the most vulnerable populations on our planet, those endangered by rising sea levels and those whose supply of food and water will be greatly affected by the changing climate," he said.

Citing the reports by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, which have shown the science and impacts of the phenomenon as well as options for response, Ban stressed that the world's people are anticipating that their governments will take action.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Photo courtesy UN)

Climate change, also the theme of this year's General Assembly debate, is a "challenge to our leadership, skills and vision - and we have to address that challenge boldly," the secretary-general said.

With 191 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has near universal membership of all countries of the world. It is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which has to date 175 member Parties.

Under the protocol, 36 states - both highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing transition to a market economy - have legally binding greenhouse gas emission limitation and reduction commitments, while developing countries have non-binding obligations to limit emissions.

The objective of both the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with Earth's climate system.

The UNFCCC is holding its annual meeting this year in Bali, Indonesia December 3 - 14.

Hosted by the government of Indonesia, the conference is expected to draft the outlines of a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012.

Several conferences earlier this year have been held to build the political will to negotiate the Kyoto successor agreement. The most recent meeting held in Vienna, Austria, concluded August 31 with a broad agreement by industrialized countries that emissions should be reduced by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

"Human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, has made the blanket of greenhouse gases around the earth thicker," the UNFCCC explains on its website. The resulting increase in global temperatures is alterating the complex web of systems that allow life to thrive on earth, such as cloud cover, rainfall, wind patterns, ocean currents, and the distribution of plant and animal species.

The minimum changes forecast could mean frequently flooded coastlines, disruptions to food and water supplies, and the extinction of many species.

More frequent and more powerful storms are occurring such as Hurricane Felix, which hit Central America earlier this month. Here, Felix survivors carry food aid from the UN's World Food Programme. (Photo by Alejandro Chicheri courtesy WFP)

Already, many effects of climate change are being observed, the UNFCCC points out. "Trends towards more powerful storms and hotter, longer dry periods have been observed and are assessed in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report."

"Warmer temperatures mean greater evaporation, and a warmer atmosphere is able to hold more moisture - hence there is more water aloft that can fall as precipitation," says the UN's climate secretariat."

At the same time, climate scientists say, dry regions lose still more moisture if the weather is hotter; worsening droughts and desertification.

In Africa's large catchment basins of Niger, Lake Chad, and Senegal, total available water has decreased by 40 to 60 percent, and desertification has been spread by lower average annual rainfall, runoff, and soil moisture, especially in southern, northern, and western Africa," says the UNFCCC.

In the Arctic, average temperatures have increased at almost twice the global rate in the past 100 years.

Temperatures at the top of the permafrost layer have generally increased since the 1980s by up to 3� ( 5.4�) the UN climate secretariat says.

In the Russian Arctic, buildings are collapsing because permafrost under their foundations has melted, the UNFCCC says. Almost all mountain glaciers in non-polar regions have retreated during the 20th century, and the overall volume of Swiss glaciers has decreased by two-thirds.

Scientists have observed climate-induced changes in at least 420 physical processes and biological species or communities, says the UNFCCC. Plants found on mountaintops have disappeared, which plants at lower levels have been migrating upwards. The mating and egg-laying of some bird species has occurred earlier in the season and growing seasons are longer across Europe.