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Suva, Dec 12 (IANS) Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has urged world leaders to act in the fight against climate change.
"We all signed the Paris Agreement. Now let's insist that we put it to work. I urge all world leaders to act. Act for all of us. Act for our future. Act for our children and grandchildren," he said on Friday while addressing the virtual Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) high-level roundtable on urgent climate change action.
He pointed out that five years on from the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) and the Paris Agreement, the world is still warming at an astonishing rate, Xinhua news agency reported.
If high-polluting countries do not curtail their greenhouse gas emissions and commit to meaningful net-zero targets, they are well on track to reach 1.5 degrees centigrade by 2030, 2 degrees by 2050 and up to 5 degrees by 2100.
"This is not just Fiji's climate emergency, it is the world's emergency... We all depend on each other. Climate complacency by one will harm all others," said the Prime Minister.
He said that they need more consistent and aggressive action across the world, and they need all nations to find ways to do more than they ever thought possible.
All parties must submit ambitious mid-century targets for achieving a net-zero global economy.
That means real strategies to reduce emissions that are backed by the kinds of policy, financing and governance mechanisms that bring them to life and make them truly transformative, he said, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic must not delay them.
Rather, they must seize the opportunity that this fateful moment gives them, to build a global economic recovery that stimulates climate-smart and inclusive sustainable development, for all people.
Fiji was the first country to ratify the Paris Agreement as well as the first small island state to lead the climate negotiations as President of the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23).
Now Fiji is among the nations committed to net-zero emissions by 2050.
--IANS
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