Over the past few decades, we have raised the earth’s average temperature by 0.75°C, causing heat waves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and so on, which have killed tens of thousands of people and caused damages amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. During these times of vulnerability, many organizations are taking measures to overcome the challenges.
The Homeless Plunged into Darkness Puerto Rico
The hurricane season has been punishing Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island with 3.4 million people and an unincorporated US territo ry. First, on September 7, 2017, Hurricane Irma, a huge category 5 storm, carved a merciless path of destruction, ravaging several Caribbean islands, killing at least 12 people, leaving thousands of others homeless, and plunging more than 1 million Puerto Ricans into darkness. People had not yet recovered from Irma when on September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria, a powerful category 4 hurricane with a wind speed of 150 mph, made a direct landfall on Puerto Rico, ravaging the entire island and flooding it with several feet of rainfall. What happened was truly catastrophic for Puerto Rico. According to CNN’s September 28, 2017 report, Maria killed 16 people in Puerto Rico, 27 in the island nation of Dominica, and 1 in the US Virgin Islands.
As Puerto Rico tries to recover from the disasters, there are signs that aid from the US mainland is not reaching the people most in need, and responses are lackluster. In many places, there is still no water for drinking or bathing or flushing the toilet. There are limited food and cell services, and dozens of remote villages have been completely cut off for weeks. Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, tweeted on October 12, 2017: “Help us. Without robust and consistent help, we will die.”
This is a terrible disaster that requires a better-coordinated response to help Puerto Rico recover from the devastation.
The United Nations Association UK (UNA-UK) is the UK’s leading source of independent analysis in the UN. It is a vibrant grassroots movement that works for a safer, fairer, and more sustainable world.
Founded in 1945, the UN reflects people’s hopes for a better future, and since then, UNA-UK has enabled ordinary people to come forward and engage the organization’s promises and influence decision-makers to support its goals. Thanks to the organization, millions of people now live safer and healthier lives, however, many have been left behind, and many of them need to be saved from their sufferings and experience a better life. Far too many people still die every year from violence, disasters, and deprivation.
Climate change highlights the need for international cooperation. Its global impacts require global action. To date, a robust treaty on climate change has been elusive.
UNA-UK serves as a bridge between governments, the UN, and the public. They lobby for joint efforts on peace, development, and human rights, and support action on climate change. They work with experts and practitioners to find new ways of dealing with the challenges we face. Through education and training, they prepare young people to play a role in international affairs. And by showing why the UN matters, UNA-UK encourages people to fulfil their responsibilities as global citizens. Their members and supporters multiply these efforts at the local and international level. Together, they form a critical mass of support for a strong, credible, and effective United Nations.
Conference of Parties, or COP 21, an international political response to climate change, was initiated at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992; the Rio Convention included the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This convention set out a framework for an action aimed at stabilizing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to avoid “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The UNFCCC, which entered into force on March 21, 1994, now has a near-universal membership of 195 parties. The COP 21 government commitments and strategies require international, regional, and national cooperation between governments, businesses, the civil society, organizations, and households.
A publication called Climate 2020 by UNA-UK provides analysis and recommendations on fulfilling the Paris Agreement on climate change.
The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Beginning in 2020, it was adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015. The agreement, for the first time, brings all nations into a common cause to make ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects with enhanced support to assist developing countries in doing so. As such, it charts a new course in the global climate effort. As of June 2017, the Paris Agreement remains a historic treaty signed by 195 parties and ratified by 146 countries, in addition to the European Union.
The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global rise in temperature this century well below 2°C and to pursue efforts that would limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C. Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change. To reach these ambitious goals, appropriate financial flows, a new technological framework, and an enhanced capacity building framework are planned to be put in place, thus supporting the action of developing countries and the most vulnerable countries in line with their respective national objectives.
At a time when the earth requires strict and effective action to solve the problems caused by abrupt climate change, on June 1 , 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the agreement, causing widespread condemnation in the European Union and many sectors in the United States. Article 28 of the agreement states the following:
The agreement entered into force in the United States on November, 4, 2016, which means that the earliest possible effective withdrawal date for the United States is November 4, 2020, four years after the agreement came into effect in the United States. On Friday, August 4, 2017, the Trump administration delivered an official notice to the United Nations that the United States intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement; however, the United States cannot formally notify the United Nations that it is withdrawing until 2019. As a result, that Friday’s notice was largely a symbolic statement with no legal weight.
On March 28, 2017, while reading the Financial Times, on the Emirates airline on my trip back to Sharjah from Johannesburg, South Africa, where I attended the Power and Electricity World Africa Summit, I came across the news about President Trump on the Paris climate change agreement, who has been making headlines since day one of his presidency. ExxonMobil, the largest publicly-traded oil and gas company, is urging the White House to stick with the global climate agreement reached in Paris in 2016.
In a letter sent to the White House on March 22, 2017, days before President Donald Trump signed an executive order rolling back Barack Obama’s climate legacy, Exxon told the administration that the Paris Agreement was an “effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change” and that the United States was “well positioned to compete.”
In its letter, Exxon argues that there are several reasons why the United States should stay in the Paris accord, including the opportunity to support the greater use of natural gas, which creates lower carbon dioxide emissions than coal when burnt for power generation. Investing in the age of climate change, Exxon’s manager for environmental policy and planning writes this in the letter: “It is prudent that the United States remain a party to the Paris Agreement to ensure a level playing field, so that global energy markets remain as free and competitive as possible.”
If I focused on the entire history of the United Arab Emirates, I would find that the environment has been a priority concern in this country. Strong institutional mechanisms to enhance environmental protection have been followed from the start. The founding of the Supreme Committee for Environment in 1975, the Federal Authority for Environment in 1993, and the Ministry of Environment and Water in 2006 reflect the increasing concern placed on environmental issues. The next step in dealing with environmental issues was taken by the UAE leadership in February 2016; that is, they expanded the role of the Ministry of Environment and Water by establishing the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, which has been an important milestone with the objective of managing all aspects related to international and domestic climate change affairs. His Excellency Dr. Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi was appointed as the minister of climate change and environment for the United Arab Emirates in February 2016. Dr. Al Zeyoudi is also the UAE’s permanent representative to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and was the director of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2015.
The establishment of the new ministry enhances the UAE’s efforts to address the issue of climate change through the implementation of comprehensive policies and initiatives to mitigate and adapt to climate change and protect our unique environmental systems. I really appreciate the steps taken towards tackling environment and climate change issues. Bravo!
On April 23, 2016, according to Emirates News Agency, or WAM, the UAE joined over 174 countries in signing the Paris Climate Agreement during the high-level signing ceremony, convened by the United Nations’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York. The ceremony marked the first step in implementing the Paris Agreement, which was adopted in December 2015.
Dr. Al Zeyoudi, minister of climate change and environment, signed on behalf of the UAE government and said, “The UAE is proud to be here today to send a united message to the world. We will make the Paris Agreement work, and we will work individually and collectively to find the best courses of climate action.”
During his statement at the signing ceremony, Dr. Al Zeyoudi outlined the voluntary steps that the UAE is taking to diversify its economy into knowledge-driven industries, particularly through the UAE Vision 2021, that is, its green growth strategy and innovation strategy. “These comprehensive strategies and plans will not only yield emission reduction benefits, but they will also help safeguard our economy for future generations.”
Dr. Al Zeyoudi also emphasized that the country’s strategies aimed at protecting its unique environmental resources, especially with regard to water and marine environment conservation.
On the margins of the signing ceremony, the UAE and the Kingdom of Morocco signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at enhancing cooperation on climate change issues and addressing global sustainability challenges. The MoU builds on the strong bilateral ties with Morocco, which would host the 22nd Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 22) of the UNFCCC, held in Marrakech, Morocco in November 2016.
The UAE delegation also met with their counterparts from Australia, Canada, France, Madagascar, Maldives, the Philippines, and the Kingdom of Morocco to discuss areas of cooperation in the context of climate change and the environment.
Dr. Al Zeyoudi also met with the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for cities and climate change, Michael Bloomberg. They discussed what cities could do more to combat climate change. The UAE delegation included Razan Al Mubarak, secretary-general of the environment agencyAbu Dhabi (EAD). Al Mubarak said, “The Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi is committed to play its part and calls for an urgent and multistakeholder approach to climate change that balances the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, decouple carbon dioxide from economic growth, adapt to a changing climate, and engage our community of citizens and residents to do their part in addressing what may be humanity’s greatest environmental, societal, and economic challenge. Abu Dhabi has remained steadfast in its commitment to the development of its city and its people, and we remain dedicated to supporting this while protecting and preserving our natural heritage. We will remain an active, collaborative player in providing efficient access to reliable environmental data that will equip decision-makers with information that ensures that responsible, sustainable development is the way of our future.”
The signing of the Paris Agreement is a significant step towards the path of ensuring that we see global warming curbed within the critical threshold.
According to Dr. Nasser Saidi, chairman of the Clean Energy Business Council, climate change is a deadly threat to our habitat, animals, and people. According to a study, the current annual emissions of greenhouse gases are about 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, compared with about 41 billion tonnes in 2005. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has warned that the world is in a situation that could, if left rampant, deliver a global average temperature rise of 4°C or more by the end of the century. This is a condition that has not existed on earth for millions of years! We are also in the anthropogenic age, where human activities have a powerful effect on the global environment.