[Dhaka/Kathmandu/Islamabad/New Delhi] December 03, 2014: Over 120 civil society organisations affiliated to Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) called upon governments gathering in Lima, Peru for the UN climate talks this week to harness the growing momentum for climate action and use it to make progress on a comprehensive international climate agreement due at the end of 2015 in Paris.
The Lima Conference of Parties aka COP20, comes on the back of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report that predicts increased sea level rise, storms and droughts as a result of unchecked greenhouse gas emissions, and the UN Environment Programme stressing for the need for global emissions to peak within the decade and then to rapidly decline to reach climate neutrality.
“With 9.7 billion USD already pledged in Green Climate Fund, ministers in Lima should agree to collectively draw up a global climate finance roadmap towards 2020 elaborating on the scaling up of public finance through to 2020, instruments of finance to be deployed, and channels / sources and sectorial distribution between adaptation and mitigation. The political will of countries to provide climate finance is increasingly coming to the fore. It is vital that 50% per cent of this finance is allocated for adaptation,” said CANSA Director Sanjay Vashist.
“EU, USD and China have already announced their Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) mitigation for post 2020 and it is expected that all remaining countries will also submit INDC by March 2015. While the numbers are being put forth, INDCs need to be defined in terms of process to assess the adequacy and equitability of proposed INDCs in an ex-ante ambition assessment and equity review prior to COP 21, accounting adaptation, monitoring framework of INDCs and channelizing private investments for INDCs.” he added.
Governments gathering in Lima will finalise the scope and format of for the national climate action commitments towards the Paris agreement and can move beyond restating well-worn positions to real negotiations which will allow them to put meat on the bones of the draft international climate action plan.
“The government and people of Bangladesh are at the forefront of tackling climate change both domestically as well as at global level. At the national level it has developed the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan and has set up two climate change funds, one with its own money and one with donor funds to implement over hundred actions identified in the strategy and action Plan. At the global level it is a key player in the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at the UNFCCC and has a strong presence at COP20 in Lima,” said International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh Director, Dr Saleemul Huq.
“We hope that the negotiations in Lima will build upon the urgency highlighted by the 5th Assessment Report and the recommendation of the high profile report on New Climate Economy. The world must move forward to zero emissions and zero extreme poverty vision with swift actions decided by the world community at this COP and reflected in the draft agreement for Paris. Pakistan will need to engage with the world community, not to highlight its vulnerability to extreme events as we have done in the past, but to articulate its vision and commitments for immediate actions to mainstream climate compatible development,” said LEAD Pakistan Founding CEO and National Program Director of Leadership for Environment and Development Ali Tauqeer Sheikh.
“Taken together, these national climate action commitments will be the world’s first collective signal of our intent to end the fossil fuel age and to embrace the dawning renewable energy era. That’s going to be a step forward, but to take into account growing demand for action, and to ensure we are doing enough, the commitments lodged with the international community need to be structured in such a way that they can be easily reviewed and scaled up,” said CANSA Board Member Manjeet Dhakal of Nepal.
Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) is a pan-Asia network of over 120 NGOs working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels.
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For more information please contact CANSA Communication Officer on senashia@cansouthasia.net or CANSA Director at sanjay@cansouthasia.net
