Hurricanes, cyclones and floods are reality for the people of Haiti. The country’s Prime Minister, Michèle Duvivier Pierre Louis, outlined her concerns. “Times are serious. We are suffering without being the cause. We need an accountable system to tackle the problems we are facing.”
The Federated States of Micronesia is another nation where the poorest of the poor risk to lose everything due to the consequences of climate change. Nevertheless, the island state’s president, Emmanuel Manny Mori, believes there is time to save his land from being devastated by a rising sealevel.
“Everyone has to bite the bullet,” he stated. “It’s time for climate justice. Please seal the deal [at the climate change conference] in Copenhagen.”
The discussions boiled down to the urgent need for a sustainable lifestyle, in developed as well as in developing countries. It has never been more obvious that consumption of resources in one part of the world won’t go unnoticed by people in other regions. The Inuit people in the Arctic region, being at the epicentre of climate change, literally see their homeland melting on a daily basis. As much as they want the permafrost back, they also realize adaptation is inevitable.
“Climate change is not alarming to us, it is terrifying,” said Mary Simon, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami organization, in her appeal for solidarity.
Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and vice-president of the Club of Madrid, has taken an active role to advocate tough targets and real action at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, December 7-18. She sees a growing movement of people who have understood the vulnerability of the poor.
“There has to be a people-centred focus; an agreement that is fair, ambitious and binding,” she said.
Robinson hopes for European leadership to lay down stricter targets. Examples include cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020, ensuring that global temperature does not rise by an average of more than 1.5 degrees, and committing to a level of no more than 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. These numbers are seen by many scientists as the necessary targets in order to preserve biodiversity and humanity.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, heading the current EU presidency, also pushed for speed, scale and focus to tackle the climate challenge. “I call on all states to put national interest aside. The challenge is too large to bargain with,” he said.
