M’sia hopes to secure US$500 mln from UN for reforestation
We have done our part and we are hoping that our proposal would be accepted so that we can implement our programmes of reforestation and conservation in the next five years.
KUCHING: Malaysia is bidding for at least USD500 million (over RM2 billion) from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) parked under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC) for reforestation and conservation over the next five years.
This was revealed by Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dato Sri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, who said his ministry had sent Malaysia’s bid to GCF to obtain the necessary funding in due time.
UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty adopted on May 9, 1992 and opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro the following month. It entered into force on March 21, 1994 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified it.
Its objective is to ‘stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’.
The framework sets nonbinding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms. Instead, the framework outlines how specific international treaties (called ‘protocols’ or ‘Agreements’) may be negotiated to specify further action towards the objective of the UNFCCC.
“We have done our part and we are hoping that our proposal would be accepted so that we can implement our programmes of reforestation and conservation in the next five years,” Wan Junaidi told The Borneo Post here yesterday.
He pointed out that Malaysia has been doing its part in conservation and reforestation efforts to address climate change, but said it would be ridiculous for the UNFCCC to
Dato Sri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, Natural Resources and Environment Minister
expect the country to implement programmes without providing the necessary funding.
“The developed countries must understand that we are doing our part in mitigating climate change and environmental protection, but they cannot expect us to preserve our forest without giving us the funds to carry out our programmes,” he reiterated.
Wan Junaidi also asserted that while Malaysia had sent its proposal, the fund management has yet to fi nalise the criteria on how to obtain the funds from it.
“So at the moment, we are hoping that they should come to terms with themselves and not change the goal post for their own benefit and keep on blaming us, the developing nations, for not doing enough,” he stressed.
He also said Malaysia will send its representatives to Bonn, Germany from Nov 6-17 to work on a ‘rule book’ for the 2015 Paris climate agreement for shifting from fossil fuels.
Wan Junaidi was commenting on the urgent need for the global community to address climate change as it has caused severe harm to human health since 2000 by stoking more heat waves, the spread of some mosquito- borne diseases and under-nutrition as crops fail, scientists said yesterday.
According to The Lancet, a British medical journal, scant action to slow global warming over the past 25 years has jeopardised “human life and livelihoods”.
“The human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible,” said the report, entitled Lancet Countdown and drawn up by 24 groups, including universities, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation ( WHO).
Among its fi ndings, the report said an additional 125 million vulnerable people had been exposed to heat waves each year from 2000 to 2016, with the elderly especially at risk.
Labour productivity among farm workers fell by 5.3 percent since the year 2000, mainly because sweltering conditions sapped the strength of workers in nations from India to Brazil.
The report, based on 40 indicators of climate and health, said climate change seemed to be making it easier for mosquitoes to spread dengue fever, which infects up to 100 million people a year.
The number of under-nourished people in 30 countries across Africa and Asia rose to 422 million in 2016, from 398 million in 1990, it said.
“Under-nutrition is identified as the largest health impact of climate change in the 21st century,” the report added.