Seychelles to push hard at climate forum
29.07.2009
Seychelles will push for lower temperature rise targets than most countries at a global forum aimed at curbing climate change.
Wills Agricole – our focal point for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – said we will fight for a rise of not more than 1.5°C when we present our position at the UNFCCC’s meeting in Copenhagen in December.
“The European Union is targeting 2°C and some countries will not mind a higher temperature limit, but we as island nation residents will suffer most from climate change so we are pressing harder,” said Mr Agricole.
He said Seychelles and other small island developing nations are calling for the long-term global goal for emission reductions to be set as a stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere well below 350 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent “and a temperature increase limited to below 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era level”.
“We are also calling on signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse emissions by at least 45% below the 1990 levels by 2020, and to collectively reduce global emissions by more than 85% from 1990 levels by 2050,” he said.
Delegates at a recent workshop here on the Clean Development Mechanism referred to the Copenhagen meeting, and Mr Agricole presented a paper about it saying “the world has a moral obligation to ensure that ‘no island is left behind’.”
“Let us seal the deal – but not any deal,” he said in the presentation, whose details Nation hopes to publish on Saturday.
Principal secretary for environment Didier Dogley told the delegates the greenhouse gases we have emitted over the past 10 or 20 years are already affecting our climate because they can stay in the atmosphere for a long period of time.
“Carbon dioxide, which is the major contributor to global warming, can stay in the atmosphere for as long as 200 years,” he said.
“We are waiting for this new climate deal in Copenhagen in December 2009.”