United Nations ambassador Rodney Charles believes that governments across the world must engage in multilateral strategies to combat global terrorism and climate change.He was responding to questions on terrorism in the wake of the Woolwich killing of a British soldier by two Islamist extremists in London last week.Charles said he could only comment on a general sense about the issue.
"T&T has to be not unmindful of the fact that the rise of global terrorism is in part based on a variant of fundamental islam, which is in search of high impact soft targets to get their message across," Charles said."We have to do what is necessary from a national security standpoint to ensure that we do not become a soft target, especially given our past experience with our homegrown version of Abu Bakr's fundamentalism."
He added that the issues of climate change were also cause for concern, especially in light of the frequency of natural disasters, including the recent tornado strikes in the United States."On the question of the tornado, it is increasingly becoming apparent that we are witnessing more frequent, high impact climatic phenomena–earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and tornados," Charles said.
"Globally, we have now reached a threshold of 400 parts per million of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere–an increase of 3.2 per cent over the past year."Scientists tell us that this can lead to an almost irreversible increase in temperatures globally exacerbated by increasing acidification of our oceans."
Charles noted that at the UN, high-level discussions have been taking place unsuccessfully to date to develop global commitments to reduce carbon emissions."Developed countries by and large have a view which is different to that of most developing countries...Small island developing states are becoming victims of the rise in water levels of our oceans," he said.
Charles said there was a need for global co-operation on these issues."What is increasingly becoming apparent is that nations acting alone will not overcome the plethora of challenges facing mankind," he said."We need a multilateral response, whether it be climate change, the tensions between fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity, sustainable development, arms/drug trade, global financial governance or water shortages/drought.
"The nation state which was the deciding factor since the 16th and 17th century is in the early stages of giving way to a global multilateral architecture and the tensions between these two institutions are seen daily at the UN.
