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Sunday, July 20, 2025

UN Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence

Ban Ki-moon: World in a race against time

by

20121205

DO­HA-Sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions Ban Ki-moon said coun­tries are in a race against time to stay be­low the thresh­old of two de­grees centi­grade above pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els that will avoid the worst im­pacts of cli­mate change.

"Let us be un­der no il­lu­sion. This is a cri­sis, a threat to us all, our economies, our se­cu­ri­ty and the well-be­ing of our chil­dren and those who will come af­ter. The dan­ger signs are all around," he said at the start of the high-lev­el ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence.

Re­fer­ring to re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports from the WMO, UN­EP and the World Bank which warned about his­toric emis­sion highs and ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, the UN chief called on coun­tries to act with ur­gency to ad­dress cli­mate change which is es­sen­tial to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

On the ne­go­ti­a­tions that are in­to the sec­ond week, Ban Ki-moon said he hoped for the con­tin­u­a­tion on Jan­u­ary 1, 2013, of the sec­ond com­mit­ment pe­ri­od of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col, a glob­al bind­ing cli­mate agree­ment which com­mits in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries to cut emis­sions.

With fast-start fi­nanc­ing ex­pir­ing at the end of the year, de­vel­oped coun­tries must al­so give clear in­di­ca­tion of scaled-up cli­mate fi­nanc­ing which will be com­men­su­rate of mo­bil­is­ing US$100 bil­lion a year by 2020 from pub­lic and pri­vate fund­ing, he told del­e­gates from over 190 coun­tries.

In­sti­tu­tions to sup­port mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion by de­vel­op­ing coun­tries in­clud­ing the Green Cli­mate Change Fund and the Cli­mate Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre and Net­work should be ful­ly equipped and ef­fec­tive. He al­so called on coun­tries to demon­strate that ne­go­ti­a­tions on a glob­al and legal­ly bind­ing in­stru­ment would re­main on track and that gov­ern­ments show how they in­tend to act on the gap be­tween mit­i­ga­tion pledges and what is re­quired to achieve the two de­grees tar­get.

"The gap can be bridged but time is not on our side," he said. Pres­i­dent of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly Vuk Je­re­mi? said based on the ur­gency of cli­mate change, he in­tends to sched­ule a high-lev­el the­mat­ic de­bate on the sub­ject of cli­mate change, green en­er­gy and wa­ter sus­tain­abil­i­ty dur­ing the re­sump­tion of the 67th ses­sion.

"It will aim at in­creas­ing po­lit­i­cal aware­ness and sup­port for the ben­e­fits of em­brac­ing the par­a­digm shift to re­new­able, low-car­bon en­er­gy sys­tems," he said. Stat­ing that the win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­vent the ef­fects of cli­mate change from spi­ralling out of con­trol is clos­ing, Je­re­mi said coun­tries must achieve the break­through to leave the world in a bet­ter shape.

Cli­mate change must be­come a core na­tion­al in­ter­est of every UN mem­ber state and should be­come em­bed­ded in the world­view of all who for­mu­late and ex­e­cute for­eign pol­i­cy to as­sume its right­ful place in the heat of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions in the 21st-cen­tu­ry.

"I per­son­al­ly be­lieve we're deal­ing here with a threat to the fu­ture of our plan­et that is ri­valed on its cat­a­clysmic ef­fects on­ly by ther­monu­clear con­flict," the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly pres­i­dent said.


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