President Danny Faure underscored the importance of climate change mitigation for the planet at the 28^th Summit of the African Union that ended on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Commenting on the report presented by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and coordinator of the Committee of African Union Heads of State and Government on Climate Change, President Faure remarked: “Our continent should be proud for the role it played in ensuring that we negotiated and signed a legally-binding agreement in Paris in 2015”, adding, “More than half of the membership of our organisation has ratified the Paris Agreement, which came into force on November 4, 2016, and we urge the remaining signatory members to ratify the agreement”.

Speaking on the last day of the two-day Summit, he said this will “send a strong signal that Africa supports the various measures for the mitigation of climate change, especially our commitment to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees, a commitment which will subsequently dictate whether the world as we know it survives into the next century and beyond”.

The President of Seychelles made the points that climate change mitigation is a central strand of the agenda of the small island developing states and that protecting the oceans benefits the whole of mankind.

“Our efforts to manage the negative effects of climate change will bring benefits not only to our land and continental spaces, but also to our oceanic spaces, which hold vast opportunities for development, if managed sustainably,” remarked President Faure.

“For the African island states as well as the coastal states and even the landlocked ones, the ocean is our gateway to the world, a major source of nutrition, a pillar of our economies, the sustenance of our way of life,” he added.

He reminded the audience that “Oceans transcend island states - they cover the majority of our planet and touch each and every one of us”.

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