close
close

Apre-salomemanzo

Breaking: Beyond Headlines!

    • At UN climate talks, some see wars making negotiators’ job harder
    aecifo

    At UN climate talks, some see wars making negotiators’ job harder

    Umito Posted on

    Dorany Pineda and Sibi Arasu
    | Associated Press

    Baku, Azerbaijan — Nisreen Elsaim has been a climate activist for a dozen years, most of which focused on the intersection of war and climate change. In April 2023, it became personal when she woke up in her native Sudan to the explosions and gunfire of an erupting civil war.

    Elsaim, her husband and their infant son eventually fled the country, among millions displaced by a war that decimated crops and livelihoods. Those who went to refugee camps found themselves displaced again when heavy rains and floods destroyed shelters and severely hampered the delivery of aid to a country that the United Nations lists among the most vulnerable to the climate change in the world.

    It’s a story Elsaim is telling at the United Nations climate talks in Baku, and one she says must succeed if countries like hers have any chance of successfully adapting to climate change.

    “We do not have the privilege of losing hope,” she said.

    The main goal of COP29, as this year’s negotiations are called, is to determine how much money richer countries will pay to help developing countries like Sudan. It’s a task that all sides — world leaders, protesters and experts — say is made more difficult by wars like those enveloping Gaza and Ukraine.

    Wars distract from the climate crisis, they say. They are wasting money that could be used in the climate fight. And they question the world’s ability to cooperate.

    “We are meeting at a time when confidence in our ability to be united is shattered,” Al Hussein bin Abdullah, Jordan’s crown prince, said in a speech during Baku’s opening days. “Saving our planet must start from the principle that all lives are worth saving. The solidarity we need depends on accepting this truth.

    Many world leaders used their opening remarks to describe how extreme weather has ravaged their countries, making issues like poverty, energy security, and access to water and resources worse or more uncertain. food. And that risks leading to more conflict, they said.

    “Climate change is now emerging as a major global threat and influencing the escalation of geopolitical tensions. This mainly exacerbates the problems of poverty eradication, food and energy security as well as access to water and resources,” said Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

    In the Middle East, Israel’s war in Gaza has caused widespread destruction, including the collapse of water and sanitation systems. According to the United Nations Environment Program, it has also reversed Gaza’s progress in a range of environmental areas, including solar energy, water desalination facilities and wetland restoration. The destruction of solar panels threatens soil and water due to leaks of lead and other heavy metals, the UN said.

    And Russia’s war in Ukraine sent the equivalent of 150 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which would not have happened without the war, according to a 2023 report from the Warfare Greenhouse Gas Accounting Initiative, a group of experts. researchers whose funding comes in part from the European Climate Foundation. This is more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions of a country like Belgium.

    Achim Steiner, chief administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said billions of dollars that could be used for poverty eradication, climate finance, education and other good causes are instead going to war.

    “We are a more divided world and a divided world struggling to sit around the table and overcome differences in order to focus on common interests,” Steiner said.

    Dozens of protesters in Baku specifically targeted Western support for Israel. One of them, Lise Masson of Friends of the Earth International, said countries like the United States and Britain, as well as the European Union, could instead spend more on climate finance.

    “These are the same systems of oppression and discrimination that put people on the front lines of climate change and put them on the front lines of the conflict in Palestine,” she said.

    Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, a network of organizations and people working on climate action, agrees that wars add to “cascading crises” and can strain the capacity to a government to respond to other problems. And she added that it would be “incredibly powerful” if these wars ended and military spending was immediately redirected to climate action.

    “When, you know, the capacity of developing countries in particular to adapt and respond to these crises is better supported by the rich countries of the North, then we could see an acceleration of climate action,” he said. she declared.

    But she said she saw broader challenges — the COVID hangover, heavy debt and economic slowdown — as the main culprits for slow progress in climate negotiations.

    Greg Puley, head of the climate team at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, acknowledged concern that global conflict could prevent COP29 leaders from reaching “the most ambitious agreement possible “. But he and others are determined to avoid that.

    “We cannot afford to continue as if nothing had happened. We cannot afford for the challenging geopolitical environment to prevent significant emissions reductions and major new investments in adaptation and resilience,” Puley said. “We will not be able to respond to climate-related disasters in the future if we do not take the necessary measures. bold steps now.

    Umito
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like