4/18/2014 Businesses, Investors, Govts that can make a difference to climate change need to be engaged now: UNFCCCRead NowThe latest government-agreed science shows that the world can still combat climate change but only if nations raise their collective ambition to achieve a carbon neutral world in the second half of the century, the UN’s top climate change official Christiana Figueres said on Sunday. “This new report challenges decision makers by presenting to them alternative futures and spelling out the pathway to each. The only safe path forward is to arrive at a carbon neutral world in the second half of this century. We cannot play a waiting game where we bet on future technological miracles to emerge and save the day - and why would we,” said Ms. Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “We already have the finance and proven technologies needed to do what is required now. The challenge and the opportunity is to increase the speed and scale of action and to make full and comprehensive use of the tools and the levers of international cooperation. Everyone who can make a difference needs to be engaged: business and investors, cities and citizens as well as governments,” she added. “Above all, governments must strengthen and expand bold policy incentives to reduce emissions at home and together construct a new climate change agreement in Paris next year which can play its full part in reversing the growth in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible,” she said. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the third installment of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which shows that human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases are continuing to rise to unprecedented levels, underlining the inadequacy of existing levels of effort to curb emissions. It spells out a wide array of technological and behavioral changes that can limit the increase in global average temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius, the point at which science shows that climate impacts start to overwhelm human efforts to cope. The report says that to stay below two degrees will also require major changes in the way the world’s institutions work. “Governments under the UN climate change negotiations have put in place a new system of international institutions to assist developing countries in dealing with climate change and it is essential that they have the expected impact soon,” said Ms. Figueres. “In particular, I urge governments to step forward this year with generous capital contributions for the new Green Climate Fund so it can assist developing nations to rapidly shift their economic development paths.” “The global climate change agreement currently under design must be catalytic in achieving our collective goal of putting the world on a safer, long-term path. At the same time, we must make full use of the available options we have before 2020 in order to bend the emissions curve back down and we must see results that can be announced in Lima at the end of this year,” said the UNFCCC Executive Secretary.
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