The largest gathering of world leaders on climate change was scheduled to open at the UN yesterday amid calls for action to put the planet on course toward reversing global warming.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is hosting the summit of 120 leaders, the first high-level gathering since the Copenhagen conference on climate change ended in disarray in 2009.
Diplomats and climate activists see the event as crucial to building momentum ahead of the Paris conference in late 2015 that is to yield a deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2020.
Photo: EPA
However, the absences of the leaders of China, the world’s biggest polluter, and India, the No.3 carbon emitter, are casting a cloud over the event.
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time. Now is the time for action,” Ban said on the eve of the meeting opening at UN headquarters.
Ban is to open the summit alongside former US vice president and climate crusader Al Gore, US actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Chinese actress Li Bingbing (李冰冰) and Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.
Leaders then take turns at the podium, from US President Barack Obama representing the world’s second-biggest polluter to Tuvaluan Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga, whose Pacific nation faces the prospect of being wiped out by rising sea waters.
China is sending Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli (張高麗), while India will be represented by Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar.
Despite much enthusiasm from climate activists for the summit’s potential to create impetus, some see the event as falling short of what is needed to get serious about the environment.
“Few governments will be in a position to make any real commitments,” the aid agency Oxfam wrote in an assessment of the summit’s likely outcome.
The initiatives to be unveiled by the private sector, foundations, and green groups at the summit “are helpful but few, if any, are really ground-breaking,” it added.
The summit is being held after marches drew hundreds of thousands of demonstrators on the streets in cities worldwide on Sunday in a show of “people power” directed at leaders reluctant to tackle global warming.
Key players from the private sector are also stepping into the fray to trumpet their commitment to greening, with Apple chief executive Tim Cook announcing on Monday that the tech giant would prioritize low-carbon growth.
“Excuses for inaction have run out. The summit can be a major milestone, but only if it delivers the real world changes that we need,” World Resources Institute president Andrew Steer said.
The summit talks are separate from the negotiations held under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will culminate with the Paris conference in December next year.
One recent report warned that a surge in carbon dioxide levels had pushed greenhouse gases to record highs in the atmosphere, increasing at their fastest rate in 30 years last year.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first international agreement to reduce emissions, expired two years ago and was never ratified by the US. Attempts to negotiate a new treaty ended in fiasco at the Copenhagen conference in 2009 and the pressure is on to avoid a repeat of that failure at the UN talks in Paris next year.
“The message from the climate summit and the message going forward to Paris is that it’s not business as usual with a little bit of green attached,” UN Special Envoy for Climate Change Mary Robinson said in an interview. “It’s changing course.”
Meanwhile, about 100 protesters were arrested on Monday in New York City during a demonstration, called Flood Wall Street, that at one point blocked streets near the New York Stock Exchange to denounce what organizers say is Wall Street’s contribution to climate change.
Protesters stopped traffic on Broadway south of the exchange for several hours.
Additional reporting by Reuters and staff writer
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