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Hello Jammu News at 1:56:00 PM 0

Bonn, Germany, Nov 16: Addressing the United Nations Climate Conference (COP23) here, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for more ambition, more leadership and more partnerships to tackle climate change.
“Our duty – to each other and to future generations – is to raise ambition,” said Mr Guterres at the opening of the high-level segment of COP23 on Wednesday, which was also attended by Heads of State and Government, including President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Prime Minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarana, who is also the President of COP23. “We need to do more on five ambition action areas: emissions, adaptation, finance, partnerships and leadership,” the Secretary-General added. The Bonn Conference, which opened on 6 November 2017, is taking place one year after the entry into force of the Paris Climate Agreement. The Agreement, which was adopted by the 196 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015, calls on countries to combat climate change by limiting the rise of global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius and strive not to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius. Today, 170 Parties have ratified the treaty. Regarding emissions reductions, the UN chief urged countries “to use the 2020 revision of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to close the 2030 emissions gap.” He also stressed how essential climate mitigation is, calling for adaptation measures and strengthening resilience. The Green Climate Fund can play a catalytic role in this regard. He appealed to its members, especially donor nations, to reinvigorate engagement with that vital finance mechanism. As greater ambition on emissions, adaptation and resilience “is inextricably linked to funding,” the Secretary-General stressed the need “to mobilise the agreed $100 billion annually for developing countries.” “We must stop making bets on an unsustainable future that will place savings and societies at risk,” he added, stressing that “if we add the economic benefits of avoiding the devastation of climate change impacts, gross domestic product (GDP) in 2050 would soar by 5 per cent.” “The world should adopt a simple rule: If big infrastructure projects aren’t green, they shouldn’t be given the green light. Otherwise we will be locked into bad choices for decades to come. Investing in climate-friendly development is where the smart money is needed,” Mr Guterres said. The Secretary-General stressed that more ambition required action coalitions across all key sectors and by all actors. “We must engage all actors – national, regional and local governments, philanthropists and investors and consumers – in the transformation to a low-emission economy,” he said.
As for political leadership, Mr Guterres encouraged countries to be bold in their deliberations and decisions in Bonn and at home. “Show wisdom in investing in the opportunities of the future. Show compassion in caring what kind of world we build for our children,” he stated.
Also addressing the COP23 High-Level segment, the President of the UN General Assembly, Miroslav Lajčák, reminded participants that “the decisions we make today will affect not only us – but also those who come after.” He added: “If we hand over a planet with an uncertain future, history will not forgive us.” For his part, Mr Guterres welcomed a series of summits and conferences on climate change which are scheduled ahead of the UN Climate Summit in September 2019, including the ‘One Planet summit’ to be convened by France next month and focusing on financing, a gathering in California, bringing together non-State actors, and the COP24 in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. UNI
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Hello Jammu News at 3:10:00 PM 0

Bonn, Germany, Nov 15: On the heels of one of the worst – and most costly – Atlantic hurricane seasons on record, a global initiative was launched Tuesday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) here with the aim of providing insurance to hundreds of millions of vulnerable people by 2020 and to increase the resilience of developing countries against the impacts of climate change.
In 2017, extreme weather events are estimated to have caused more than $200 billion worth of damage worldwide, as hurricanes, droughts and rising sea levels devastated vulnerable communities with increased frequency and intensity. In the face of skyrocketing costs, new forms of financial protection have become an increasingly urgent part of the climate change discussion, the UN News said. The InsuResilience Global Partnership is a major scaling-up of an initiative started by the G7 in 2015 under the German Presidency. It aims at meeting the pledge of providing cover and support to an extra 400 million vulnerable people by 2020. The Global Partnership now brings together G20 countries in partnership with the so called ‘V20’ nations, a group of 49 of the most vulnerable countries including small islands like Fiji, which holds the Presidency of COP23. “The Global Partnership is a practical response to the needs of those who suffer loss because of climate change,” said the COP23 President and Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama. This announcement on climate risk insurance was made a day before the high-level segment of COP23, which Heads of State and Government, Ministers, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres are expected to attend. Thomas Silberhorn, Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, announced support of 125 million dollar for the new Global Partnership as part of the launch. This follows the £30 million commitment to the initiative made by the British Government in July 2017. “Climate risk insurance is a response to the simple fact that extreme weather events are constantly increasing in number and intensity, and also a response to our experience that the international community and the countries affected by extreme weather events tend to really act after those incidents occurred and they tend to come too late and to intervene not significantly enough,” Mr. Silberhorn told a press conference. “So our intention is to act more preemptively, to act in time, and to act decisively in order to reduce the impact of extreme weather events. Insurance is one tool to address this challenge,” he added. The Global Partnership supports data and risk analysis, technical assistance and capacity building according to countries needs and priorities, solutions design of concrete risk finance and insurance solutions, smart support for the implementation for such schemes and monitoring and evaluation efforts. “This new and higher-ambition initiative represents one shining example of what can be delivered when progressive governments, civil society and the private sector join hands with creativity and determination to provide solutions,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Change secretariat (UNFCCC). The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), for example, is being supported with the help of ‘InsuResilience.’ The most recent example of support was in September 2017, when more than $55 million was paid out to 10 Caribbean countries within 14 days of hurricanes Irma and Maria, which left an arc of destruction across the region. The money was used in various ways, for example, to quickly buy urgently needed medicines and to build emergency shelters for the people affected by the storms. In Zambia, InsuResilience supports the NWK Agri-Services cotton company, which offers direct weather and life insurance to small contract farmers. In 2015, some 52,000 farmers decided to buy insurance. Following a major drought in 2016, more than 23,000 farmers received payments.  UNI
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Hello Jammu News at 12:32:00 PM 0


Bonn, Germany, Nov 14: The urgent need to raise the finances to meet the funding goals of the Paris Agreement, especially to support action by developing countries, takes centre-stage at the UN Climate Conference (COP23) in Bonn, Germany.
“We need all financial players – public, private, domestic, international – and including markets and regulators, to work together effectively to mobilise at least $1.5 trillion in climate finance that is needed every year,” said Eric Usher, Head of Finance Initiative at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Monday. As part of ‘Finance for Climate Day’ at COP23, high-level representatives from across the sector highlighted their efforts to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement of keeping the average global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and as close as possible to 1.5 Celsius. They stressed that every dollar invested in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change gets double the bang for the buck because it directly supports the international community’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
According to the UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat, finance for climate is flowing at a greater pace than ever, with vibrant and growing markets for renewable energy, electric vehicles, green buildings and climate-smart agriculture seeing aggressive growth, backed by exponential advances in innovative green financial instruments, indices and markets. Equally, the finance sector is recognising to a much greater degree where and how climate change presents risks to its existing investments and the need to adjust their portfolios away from carbon-intensive assets to reduce that risk. However, much more is needed to secure finance and investment at the scale required to deliver a fully de-carbonised and climate-resilient global economy by 2050.
“The potential for climate friendly investment in areas such as clean energy and climate-smart agriculture is enormous,” said Laura Tuck, Vice-President Sustainable Development at the World Bank. “The key is to get the funding to flow so that everyone everywhere can benefit from low-carbon and climate resilient investments.” Peter Damgaard Jensen, CEO of the Danish Pension provider PKA and Chair of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) said at a press conference that “it is extremely important that there is a significant increase of investor awareness and action with regards to supporting the transition […] to a low carbon economy.” “Strong investment signals from policy makers across carbon trading, energy, transport and buildings, are essential to unlock the necessary capital,” he added. Members of African civil society and members of Parliament spoke Monday on the urgency of climate finance as a prerequisite to ambitious action in African countries. “Africa is the continent that pollutes the least,” but “it is Africa which suffers the effect of climate change,” said at a press conference Roger Nkodo Dang, President of the Pan-African Parliament, which is the legislative body of the African Union. In an interview with UN News, he added that developed countries have a duty to provide additional support to Africans for their green development. “If you tell us 'do not cut the wood,’ we say, ‘you bring us electricity,’” he said. “It’s not a favor; it’s a compensation.” UNI
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Hello Jammu News at 12:37:00 PM 0

Bonn, Germany, Nov 13: With the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) here entering its final week of negotiations, the Fiji Presidency announced the Gender Action Plan, highlighting the role of women in climate action.
At a press conference on Sunday, President of COP23 and Prime Minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama, announced that the States Parties had finalised the plan. “This recognises the role of women in climate action,” he said. “It is about integration of gender into all the work around climate policy – both nationally and internationally,” added Nazhat Shameen Khan, the Chief Negotiator for the COP23 Presidency. Heads of State and Government, Ministers, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres will be attending the high-level segment of COP 23, on 15-16 November. Also on Sunday, countries and corporations announced new initiatives to cut emissions from forest use and establish sustainable forestry management programmes.
The efforts include an Ecuadorean initiative to reduce 15 million tons of CO2 emissions in the forest sector; a commitment to deforestation-free commodities by Walmart; Mars Inc.'s new policy to reduce their carbon footprint 27 per cent by 2025 and 67 per cent by 2050 through addressing deforestation throughout their corporate value chain; and Gabon's National Park Service efforts to combat illegal logging. “The forests have this incredible ability to store carbon and we have under-invested in that,” said Inger Andersen, Director-General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), at a press conference.“Protecting and restoring the forests is absolutely key to achieving the Paris Agreement [as well as] the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” Also today the industry sector said it is set to deliver much of the emissions reductions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goal but added that closer national and international policy and implementation strategy partnerships together with governments will help business take further, faster action. “Industry is taking action on climate change like no other period in history,” said Peter Bakker, President and CEO of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD, a global, business leaders-led organisation of over 200 leading businesses working on sustainable development). “The transition to the low-carbon economy is inevitable, and business will continue to implement the solutions necessary for fulfilling the Paris Agreement,” he added. Since 2015, over 600 companies with combined revenues of more than $15 trillion have made over 1,000 commitments to climate action through 'We Mean Business,' a global non-profit coalition. Many are going 100 percent renewable, are implementing science-based targets and are collaborating across sectors through the Low Carbon Technology Partnership initiative (LCTPi). Local and regional leaders from around the world signed the Bonn-Fiji Commitment Sunday, pledging action to deliver on the Paris Agreement. Cities are responsible for as much as 70 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels used for energy and transport, and with more than half the global population living in urban centres and this figure expected to approach two-thirds by 2050, the Bonn-Fiji Commitment pushes efforts to advance sustainable urban development. The Commitment encompasses 19 initiatives, including The European Covenant of Mayors and Compact of Mayors joining forces to create the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy – the largest coalition of over 7,400 cities from six continents and 121 countries to reduce emissions and make societies and economies resilient to climate change. Similarly, the UN World Health Organisation (WHO), in collaboration with the UN Climate Change secretariat (UNFCCC) and in partnership with the Fijian Presidency launched an initiative to protect people living in small island developing States from the health impacts of climate change. The vision is that, by 2030, all small island developing States will have health systems that are resilient to climate change.
UNI
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