EU forms climate alliance with ACP

PARIS – The European Union has formed an alliance with 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in a final push for agreement at the climate summit COP21.

The new alliance has agreed a common position on some of the most divisive aspects of the proposed deal.

However, the EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete says talks are still ongoing on how to accommodate a 1.5 degrees Celcius warming limit within the agreement.

The alliance, which includes the 28 EU member states, has agreed the Paris deal must be legally binding, inclusive and fair and be reviewed every five years.

The EU will pay US$516 million to support climate action in the partner countries up to 2020.

The alliance has also agreed the Paris text must include a “transparency and accountability system” to track nations’ progress on their climate pledges, and share best practice.

“The EU and the ACP Group represent a great majority of countries in the world and we want an ambitious Paris Agreement to accelerate the global transition that we urgently need,” said ACP Secretary General Patrick Gomes.

“Now is the time for leaders to be ambitious. The adverse impacts of climate change threaten the world as a whole, including the very survival of the 79 countries of the ACP Group, while impeding their achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”, said ACP Secretary General Patrick Gomes.

“Our task at this historic gathering is to breathe new life into the 23-year-old Climate Change Convention as climate change is fast creating an uncertain future for all,” said Samuel Manetoali, Minister of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology of the Solomon Islands.

“In the remaining days, we must collectively establish medium and long-term emission reduction pathways capable of limiting temperature increase to well below 1.5 degrees Celcius.”

The Tuvalu prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, has again stressed that any further temperature increase beyond 1.5 degrees Celcius will spell the total demise of Tuvalu, and other low lying island nations.

In his address at the High Level Segment of the COP21 in Paris, he said even at current warming Tuvalu’s future is already bleak, and greenhouse gases need to be urgently cut.

He says there is no time left for rhetoric or hiding, and the world must stand together to finalise an agreement towards keeping global temperature rises within 1.5 degrees Celcius of warming.

Sopoaga says there needs to be a permanent mechanism for loss and damage anchored in the Paris Treaty, so there is assurance that the necessary response to climate change impacts will be forthcoming.

He says this is important to Tuvalu and other low-lying small island developing states so their survival from increased sea level, and other severe impacts of climate change, can be safeguarded.

Sopoaga says the Paris Treaty must have clear objectives that protect human rights, promote gender equality, respect the rights of indigenous peoples and ensure that all actions under the treaty are environmentally sound. - PNC sources