UN climate meeting closes under Trump shadow
MARRAKESH, Morocco: A UN climate conference dominated by Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw from a hard-won pact concludes in Marrakesh yesterday amid fears that the goal of curtailing worst-casescenario global warming may not be achieved without US backing.
The first gathering of the UN’s climate forum since last year’s adoption of the Paris Agreement to curtail disastrous global warming, was tasked with drafting a roadmap for its execution.
It has been overshadowed by uncertainty about US presidentelect Trump’s vow to ‘cancel’ the pact to rein in greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming.
On Thursday, the eve of the conference’s closure, the nearly 200 parties to the UN’s climate convention made a rare united appeal for ‘the highest political commitment’ to combat climate change.
“Our climate is warming at an alarming and unprecedented rate and we have an urgent duty to respond,” they said in the ‘Marrakesh Action Proclamation’.
“We call for the highest political commitment to combat climate change, as a matter of urgent priority.”
Many fear that Trump, who has described climate change as a ‘hoax’ perpetrated by China, will act on his threat to withdraw from the pact, thus ruining years of painstakingly-negotiated political goodwill.
Worse, a US withdrawal would leave the cause without billions of dollars of finance for developing countries to make the shift to clean energy or the means to shore up defences against climate change impacts that can no longer be avoided. — AFP