The latest leg of negotiations before the Paris climate summit just concluded in Bonn, Germany, with little progress made towards the anticipated comprehensive climate change agreement. Ideally, a draft agreement should have been ready by now, to enable world leaders to adopt it in December.
“There is no agreement about climate finance, the major questions of who should provide the finance, how much, and to who remain unanswered,” Mattias Söderberg said, who chairs the ACT Alliance advisory group on climate change advocacy. “The poor and vulnerable communities remain confident that these questions will be answered in their favour, since they are already affected by the impacts of climate change.”
ACT Alliance, a global consortium of faith-based humanitarian groups with more than 120 members, recognises that climate change is a threat to lives and livelihoods in communities all over the world, and particularly the poor and vulnerable, who are already facing significant threat from the impacts of climate change.
“Climate change is a very real threat to those we serve,” Church World Service President and CEO, the Rev. John L. McCullough said. McCullough is ACT Alliance’s North America Ambassador for Climate Justice. “Every second our world leaders choose not to reach a compromise, the risk to the world’s poor and marginalized increases. They risk being forced from their homes, losing sources of water and food, and are the most at-risk for natural disasters.”
“We know lack of action to reduce emissions will lead to a greater need for peoples to adapt to the impacts of climate change,” Söderberg said. “However, with lack of finance for adaptation we will face even greater loss and damage as a result of increasingly extreme climatic events, including drought, flooding and sea level rise. The logic is so evident, but developed countries refuse to give loss and damage proper attention,” says Söderberg.
The biggest challenge so far has been the lack of ambition: governments are making pledges that are far below what is required to adequately tackle climate change.
“Considering the lack of ambition in climate pledges made by countries during the past months, it is worrying to see the difficulties to reach an agreement about a mechanism to increase the ambition in the coming years. With no strong review possibilities and no agreed formats or accounting systems, low ambition may be locked in for decades,” adds Söderberg.
ACT Alliance continues to mobilise people throughout the world in its ‘Act now for climate justice’ campaign, seeking to amplify the voices of millions of people for climate justice.
ACT Alliance is and international humanitarian and development network comprising 145 organisations working in 140 countries. ACT is behind the Act now for Climate Justice global campaign at actclimate.org.