By Sarah Long
12 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The United Nations needs to engage with partners from both the private sector and civil society to combat climate change, General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim said Monday.
This need for partnerships was the primary theme of this week’s three-day informal debate, titled “Addressing Climate Change: The United Nations and the World at Work,” held at UN headquarters in New York. The event was extended by a full day in order to accommodate 115 speakers, including representatives from 107 member states, and reflected the wide support and commitment within the General Assembly for tackling issues of climate change.
“There is a general conviction that has emerged from this debate,” Mr. Kerim said in his closing remarks, “that the actions necessary to address climate change are so intertwined that they can only be tackled through combined efforts”
This sentiment was echoed by the UN’s top climate change official, Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), who attended the debate.
“It’s wonderful that governments amongst each other agree on certain things, but the question is how that really trickles down to the community level,” de Boer told MediaGlobal. “Then you really have to engage many of the NGOs, the civil society groups that are doing grassroots work in those kinds of communities.”
This holds particularly true for developing nations, de Boer told MediaGlobal. “I think very often you see NGOs getting to places governments don’t get to, that it’s very difficult for governments to get to,” he said. “And there have been very innovative things done by NGOs in terms of rural electrification, micro-credit programs, stuff that’s on such a small scale that many banks and many governments find it difficult to focus on.”
While governments and NGOs are necessary for distributing ideas among people in developing nations, de Boer emphasized the fact that the innovations themselves often come from the private sector, giving commercial ventures the potential to become valuable allies.
“If you talk about climate change you’re mainly talking about energy, and 86 percent of the investments in the energy sector are made by the private sector,” de Boer told MediaGlobal. “So clearly you can’t come to grips with this issue without engaging the private sector.”
Many developing countries will need partners from across the international community in order to develop sustainable energy sources.
“For developing countries that are facing huge challenges in terms of economic growth and poverty eradication, it’s pretty much inconceivable for them to make significant advances to address climate change without technology transfer and without financial assistance,” de Boer said.
The plight of many small island countries provides a glimpse into the importance of technology transfers and other partnerships in addressing climate change, particularly for those developing nations that lack the technological resources needed to adapt to environmental changes.
Small island states are, in effect, already living the planet’s worst climate change nightmares.
Often only a few feet above sea level, these nations are especially vulnerable to oceanic changes, such as rising sea levels and storm surges caused by extreme weather. Their small land mass mean that many of the effects of desertification and salinization of water sources are amplified, and have already been observed as having substantial negative effects on the countries’ populations.
Addressing reporters at the UN this week, representatives of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) called for assistance in implementing technologies to address these issues.
“We don’t have oil, and the oil price is getting higher and higher. So we have to take what we have – the sun and the wind. But we don’t have the technology,” Ambassador Antonio Lima of Cape Verde, the Co-Chair of AOSIS, told reporters on Tuesday. “So if our partners want to help us, they should help us with renewable energy and clean development. That is what we need at this moment.”
Ultimately, Lima said, global climate change is a problem facing everyone, and it is imperative that everyone be engaged in addressing its effects and finding solutions.
“This is a common challenge. This is a common struggle,” Lima said. “We [the small island states] are prepared to face our challenges. But we know our partners will understand, if they didn’t until now, that it is the same struggle, because we are in the same boat.”