Call for greater efforts to curb warming

BERLIN: Leaders from 16 European countries have called for greater efforts to curb global warming as international climate talks are to take place in Poland next month.

In a joint declaration, presidents and prime ministers from Cyprus to Sweden described climate change as “the key challenge of our time”, noting that average global temperatures have already increased sharply since pre-industrial times.

“We have felt the immediate effects as recently as this summer, including in Europe,” the leaders said. “Heatwaves and scorching fires from Greece to the Arctic Circle claimed the lives of dozens of women, men and children while eradicating the livelihoods of many others.”

The declaration, spearheaded by Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, says while further warming “is a serious threat to peace and stability around the globe”, measures to prevent it are both necessary and potentially beneficial to economies and societies around the world.

Negotiators gathering in Poland from December 2-14 will seek to finalise the framework of the 2015 Paris climate accord and discuss setting new, more ambitious goals for 2025.

So far, the targets put forward by the more than 190 countries that signed the agreement are insufficient to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels where global warming will remain under 2°C by the end of the century, let alone the more ambitious 1.5°C target set in Paris. “We collectively have the obligation towards future generations to do everything humanly possible to stop climate change as well as to adapt to its adverse effects,” the European leaders said.

The signatories include Germany, Italy and Greece, but not of Poland, which is hosting the talks in Katowice. | AP African News Agency (ANA)