‘Urgency’ sought to combat climate change
Fiji PM to summit: ‘We must not fail our people’
BONN, Germany — Fiji’s prime minister called for a sense of urgency in the fight against global warming Monday, telling negotiators “we must not fail our people,” as he opened two weeks of talks on implementing the Paris accord on combating climate change, which is already affecting his Pacific island nation.
While diplomats and activists gathered in Bonn for the COP 23 Fiji U.n.climatechangeconference, the U.N. weather agency said 2017 is set to become the hottest year on record aside from those impacted by the El Niño phenomenon.
The talks in Germany are the first major global climate conference since President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will pull out of the 2015 Paris accord unless he can secure a better deal, and the first time that a small island nation is chairing such a conference.
Negotiators will focus on thrashing out some of the technical details of the Paris accord, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. While Trump has expressed skepticism, a recent U.S. government report concluded there is strong evidence that man-made climate change is taking place.
Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe ‘Frank’ Bainimarama, the Bonn conference’s chairman, offered greetings “from one of the most climate-vulnerable regions on earth,” underlining “our collective plea for the world to maintain the course we set in Paris.”
“The need for urgency is obvious,” he said. “Our world is in distress from the extreme weather events caused by climate change.”
“We must not fail our people” and must make the Paris accord work, Bainimarama said, adding that means to “meet our commitments in full, not back away from them.”
He didn’t refer directly to the Trump administration’s position, but appeared to play off Trump’s “America first” slogan.
“The only way for every nation to put itself first is to lock arms with all other nations and move forward together,” the Fijian leader declared.
In a brief statement toward the end of the opening session Monday, a senior U.S. diplomat told delegates that Washington’s position hadn’t changed since Trump’s announcement in June.
But Trigg Talley, the U.S. deputy special envoy for climate change, said the United States will continue to participate in international climate change negotiations and meetings.