Climate change 'like a cancer'

Source(s): United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific
UNISDR Champion and Philippine Senator Loren Legarda (right) and French actress Marion Cotillard (left) read the Manila Call to Action on Climate Change, a joint Philippines-France statement launched in Malacañang as one of the highlights of the state visit of French President Francois Hollande to the Philippines. (Photo: Kenly Monteagudo)
UNISDR Champion and Philippine Senator Loren Legarda (right) and French actress Marion Cotillard (left) read the Manila Call to Action on Climate Change, a joint Philippines-France statement launched in Malacañang as one of the highlights of the state visit of French President Francois Hollande to the Philippines. (Photo: Kenly Monteagudo)

Bangkok, 26 February, 2015 - The Manila Call to Action on Climate Change was launched today in the Philippines by UNISDR Champion and Philippines Senator, Loren Legarda, on the occasion of the State visit by French President, Francois Hollande.

Senator Legarda who is Chair of the Senate Committee on Climate Change, read the declaration with the French actress, Marion Cotillard, one of many high profile figures accompanying the French President on his mission to press home the urgency of reaching agreement this year on reducing carbon emissions.

On his arrival today President Hollande called for a climate change alliance with the Philippines that would incentivize similar co-operation between rich and poor nations at the COP21 climate conference in Paris later this year.

Highlighting the consequences of failure to broker a new universal agreement at this year’s COP21 Conference on Climate in Paris, Senator Legarda said: “The debate continues on whether to act now or to delay implementing mitigation policies until a future date. In the meantime, lives continue to perish.

“The irony does not end there. Others who choose not to act, justify inaction in the name of development. But one thing is clear. As the IPCC points out in its 5th Assessment Report, delaying action only shifts the burden from the present to the future. By then, as in cancer, it might be too late to reverse the disastrous effects of global warming.”

Before reading the final statement, she participated at the Climate Change Forum “Towards COP 21: The civil society mobilized for the climate”, organized by the French Embassy as part of the State visit of French President Francois Hollande, who is in the Philippines today and tomorrow.

Also present at the Climate Change Forum were Nicolas Hulot, Special Climate Envoy of the French President; Segolene Royal, French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy; Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations; Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); and Hela Cheikhrouhou, Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund, among others

“We have been warned and we continue to be warned, but we are just not listening enough,”she said.

The Senator explained that the Philippines and France are key players in the global climate action—France being the host of the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or COP 21 and the Philippines as a nation that is among the most vulnerable to climate change and its impacts.

“I am glad that President Hollande is eager to make this a successful conference that would bring in significant results, specifically an ambitious and legally binding climate deal to limit global warming below 2°C, which has been elusive for many years now,” she said.

The Philippines tops the 2015 Global Climate Risk Index, an updated list of countries most affected by weather-related disasters like storms, floods, and heat waves. She invited forum participants to join her in Sendai at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction which runs from March 14-18.

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