Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on September 2nd, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
From: sniffenj at un.org
Subject: UNEP Executive Director remarks at IPCC 20th anniversary.
Date: September 2, 2008
The following is the content as received - our comment is in our title to this piece.
***
31 August, 2008 Geneva - Speech by Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to the 20th Anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
It was 1988 and a leap year: the Summer Olympics games were held in Seoul; the first Fair Trade label was launched in the Netherlands and UN peacekeepers won the Nobel Peace Prize.
But perhaps one of the greatest leaps occurred not in time but in environmental science with the establishment by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization of the IPCC.
Over 20 years, thousands of scientists have selflessly come together to
periodically sift, to weigh and to validate the scientific evidence on the
links between rising greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on the
global climate.
The likely impacts too of climate change on humans and vital
ecosystems from glaciers and forests to river systems and coastal
settlements.
And increasingly, the price tag of lethargy and indifference if these
emissions are left unchecked.
Contrasting too with the likely economic benefits of swift and
decisive action-and adaptation- to this most over arching of
human-made threats.
In doing so the IPCC has put the sharpest and most potent lens possible on
the unsustainable development paths of the past few centuries.
It has also however shone a bright light on the choices and down the path
to the opportunities we have for a greener, fairer and ultimately more
sustainable world.
The Fourth Assessment Report, launched last year, was a milestone and was
crowned with the IPCC being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
It was a prize not just for the Fourth Assessment and the current and past
Panel scientists but also for the previous and current Chair, Dr Pachauri,
and his staff. { THIS IS A VERY UNCLEAR STATEMENT AND HIDES THE ONE MAN THAT WAS PROBABLY MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR FIGHTING THE CAUSE OF DISMANTLING THE INCREDIBLE LIES AND CORPORATE PUSH THAT STILL CAUSE MEDIA TO DOUBT THE PROBLEM, AND TO DOUBT THAT THERE IS AN ECONOMIC SOLUTION — THIS MAN WAS BOB WATSON — PRESENTLY STILL CHIEF SCIENTIST AT THE WORLD BANK THAT HE JOINED IN 1996. We were among the people that spoke up in 2002 when Washington decided to push him out of the IPCC leadership position.}
For undoubtedly the findings rolled out in 2007 underlined that climate
change is an environmental change phenomenon but one that goes to the core
of the UN’s mandate. { YES, YES, YES}
A point recognized not just by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee but in the
statements by retired and serving senior-ranking military in Australia, the
United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
Undoubtedly the IPCC science also underpinned and fostered the UN Security
Council debate in April 2007 when it held its first ever discussion on
climate change, peace and security.
In recognizing all this we must also recognize two very special
people-Mostafa Tolba and Godwin Olu Patrick Obasi who, as heads of their
respective UN agencies in 1988 had the vision and the determination to
establish the IPCC.
Indeed one wonders whether the Kyoto Protocol, its inventive market
mechanisms and the current UN Framework Convention negotiations towards a
post-2012 regime, would even be a reality if it had not been for foresight
of these two parents of the Panel.
It is a mark of the Panel’s veracity, transparency and courage that such an
active and wide-ranging political process is underway and that the debate
is on how to deal with climate change not whether it is a reality or a
chimera—that has been empirically and scientifically laid to rest.
It would be an even greater tribute to the Panel’s scientists, both past
and present, if Governments can find their own courage, tenacity and
collective will to rise above their differences and seize the moment.
There are just some 500 days for Governments to deliver what the world is
waiting for in Copenhagen in 2009—the facts and figures from IPCC delivered
in 2007, and which powered the Bali Climate Convention meeting into high
gear, remain as valid and as sobering today as they did just over six
months ago.
Indeed the science emerging recently from a wide variety of respected
institutes is in many ways even more sobering and certainly not less.
So there is no need to idle, slide into reverse or take detours on the Bali
Road Map—there is a need to find the highest gear possible to speed all
countries on their way to a landmark deal.
***
What of the future?
It is clear that there is an urgent need to translate the IPCC’s global and
regional assessments onto the sub-national, national and even local level
in order to focus developing country and donor country efforts on
climate-proofing vulnerable economies.
So I am delighted to note that UNEP is now cooperating with the IPCC and
other partners on a European Commission-funded project with these very
aims.
It is part of a wider effort of outreach aimed at bridging the knowledge
gap on the implications and actions needed as a result of the Fourth
Assessment Report.
Under this umbrella UNEP is taking a lead in the next phase of the
Assessments of Impacts and Adaptation of Climate Change -with the guidance
and assistance of you: the current IPCC scientists.
This is aimed at encouraging the research of the future IPCC scientists
from developing countries while bringing focus to impacts and thus
adaptation measures at the level of the ecosystem and river catchment
basin.
We are here to celebrate 20 years of the IPCC—its place in the history
books is clear in terms of climate science.
The final entry as a result of the Panel’s work may, however, prove to be
far larger.
For if that science can be fully and frankly translated into political
action we will have gone a long way to not only overcoming climate change.
The international community will have also embarked on a path that will
also address other persistent and emerging concerns- from overcoming
poverty and biodiversity loss to one where tensions and conflicts over
scarce resources can at best be managed and at the very best, overcome.
Science is knowledge and thus it is power but also empowerment of
politicians, business men and woman, civic leaders, the UN and the public.
The dictionary defines an imperative as a ”plea”; a ”duty”; something
that is ”impossible to evade or ignore” and an ”obligation”.
This is what the IPCC has handed to this generation of presidents, prime
ministers and politicians, indeed to this generation overall—facts and
figures that cannot be ignored and a duty and an obligation to act, and to
act fast.
***
Now to the point of the 500 days to the December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen that did not mention the December 2008 meeting in Poznan, Poland:
It is clear that with the US Presidential elections of November 2008, the Poznan meeting has become totally unnecessary, as there will be no functioning US representation at that meeting. For Mr. Ahim Steiner to regain his personal credibility on the issues, it would be in place to state clearly that for reasons of saving CO2 emissions caused by unnecessary travel to an unnecessary meeting - that meeting should be canceled, or rescheduled for May 2009. Just to step in the UN political line will not help the subject that I know he cares for personally. (the www.SustainabiliTank.info opinion)
***********************************
Received from:
Jim Sniffen
Programme Officer
UN Environment Programme
New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
info at nyo.unep.org
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