By Marianne Sarmiento / Special to the BusinessMirror
WITH only six months to the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, Philippe Zeller, French ambassador at large for Climate Negotiations for Asia and Oceania, was in the Philippines to discuss with authorities the updates on international climate negotiations and the current developments in preparation for the meeting.
Zeller underlined that the excellent cooperation between the Philippines and France is “at the core of COP preparations because we need partners that are able to explain climate disruptions and build proposals to face climate change.”
He cited the Philippines’s important role in leading the Climate Vulnerable Forum for Asian countries that are highly at risk to a warming planet and serves as a platform to act together to deal with global climate change.
“We have a rather positive stance and we do appreciate to have a dialogue with these types of countries [who are proof of climate distractions] that are ready to act swiftly and to help us prepare for COP 21,” Zeller said.
His visit came after French President François Hollande met with President Aquino in February to launch the Manila Call to Action on Climate Change, signed by both parties at the Malacañang.
It is a call to the international community to conclude an agreement based on common but differentiated responsibilities that would limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or below.
“This ‘common call’ was really a message sent to all our partners around the world that climate disruption is already here. There are dramatic and visible events [typhoons, droughts, flooding] and this is really an appeal not only to see the impact and to act in the view of preparing for the COP 2015 and to think what we could collectively do after 2015,” Zeller said during his meeting with the media on Wednesday.
France will host this year’s COP, which will be held from November 30 to December 11 in Paris. This will be one of the largest climate conferences ever organized, which that will bring around 40,000 participants—delegates, observers, non-governmental organizations and civil-society members. The conference is built on four pillars:
• To reach a global agreement that is legally binding and is sustainable to enable long-term change that must be applied by each party-member.
Currently, there is an 80-page draft containing the ideas of all United Nations members to combat climate change. It will be narrowed down during the negotiations.
• To collect intended nationally determined contributions, explaining methods a country is doing by itself in adapting its populations to the consequences of climate change;
• To achieve the objective of developed countries to collect $100 billion every year, starting in 2020, to combat climate change while promoting fair and sustainable development; and
• To raise awareness of the initiatives and the opportunities to help act against climate change, also known as the agenda of solutions.
Image credits: French Embassy