Eurasia Regional Section of the World organization "United Cities and Local Governments"
Eurasia Regional Section of the World organization "United Cities and Local Governments"
Local and regional governments from all over the world join efforts to combat climate change. On December 3-14, 2018 the city of Katowice (Poland) was the main policy platform for discussion of the Climate Package aimed at implementing the Paris Agreement signed three years ago.
According to the COP 24 President Michał Kurtyka, the aim of the conference was to develop the mechanism of international control over the fulfilment of commitments to reduce emissions at the national level: “We are discussing not the need to control but how to do it. This is much more difficult. What does “national contribution” mean? How is each country involved in the common efforts of the humanity? And at last how can we learn whether they fulfill the commitments?”
Besides the representatives of national governments, more than 80 local and regional leaders among whom were members of the World Organization “United Cities and Local Governments”, the Global Covenant of Mayors, C40, Climate Chance and other international organizations took part in the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
According to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, there is no further retreat for inhabitants of the planet: «We are in trouble. We are in big trouble with climate change. The climate is changing faster than we, and we need to catch up, better early than late – before it is too late. For many people, regions, countries this is already a matter of life or death”.
2018 brought the recognition of the real scale of the climate change: climate warming of 1,5 degrees centigrade will cause irreversible consequences. According to the preliminary estimates, in case of increase of the Earth average temperature, more than 69 million of people will be in the flooded area; herewith about 15% of the total population will suffer from drought and heat wave.
Meanwhile the World Bank announced that from 2020 it will double financial support to address climate change up to 200 billion Euros, 50 billion out of which will be aimed at adaptation to climate change.
25.12.2018
