Climate change is a problem that affects all countries and has nothing to do with politics and existing political alliances, Laurence Tubiana, the CEO of the European Climate Foundation, told Sputnik on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Paris Peace Forum.
PARIS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2018) Climate change is a problem that affects all countries and has nothing to do with politics and existing political alliances, Laurence Tubiana, the CEO of the European Climate Foundation, told Sputnik on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Paris Peace Forum."Whatever countries think, I mean China versus the United States, or Russia versus others, the climate change will impact everyone. Of curse of the impact can be a little more severe here and there, but it is a problem of every country, whatever alliances or positions they have on the global scene," Tubiana stressed.
She added that the recent report prepared by the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), which outlined global warming hazards and stressed the need to take drastic action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 instead of the 2 degrees Celsius target agreed in Paris in 2015, illustrated that climate change affected each and every country.
"It's really difficult to go from fossil fuel-based economy to something totally different. But now you have companies, and cities, and regions that see how to do differently, and they are taking decisions. I'm not worried on the long-term trend, what I'm worried about is the problem of the delay, because we do not have time. And that is of course why this report of the IPCC is worrying because it says we have very little time," Tubiana indicated.
She spoke about her expectations for the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) in Poland, stressing that the parties to the convention had to complete the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
"We know that we have to really create the process to ramp up ambition on the national contributions at the moment untill 2020. And, of course, there are more difficulties because of the geopolitical context which is difficult. So this is the only part I am concerned with," Tubiana, said, adding that, in general, she had positive expectations.
The 24th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will be held in the Polish city of Katowice on December 3-14, 2018. The Polish presidency has three main goals: developing environmentally friendly technologies, building solidarity in industrial regions' transition to climate friendly societies and achieving climate neutrality.
The Paris climate deal, created within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, went into force on November 4, 2016. It has been ratified by 181 of the 197 parties to the accord. The deal aims at keeping the increase in average global temperature at below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
