A high-powered UN conference on climate change opened here on Wednesday with a call to the international community to implement the Kyoto protocol on global warming as a matter of urgency.
”We must bring into force the protocol without delay,” said T R Baalu, who was appointed on Wednesday as president of the eighth Conference of Parties to the UN framework convention on Climate Change, known as COP 8.
”The rise in temperature is already beginning to affect physical and biological systems,” Baalu told environment leaders from 185 nations.
”Frequent floods and droughts are having serious impacts. Depleted moisture combined with heat stress is projected to reduce the global yield of major food grains,” he added. Baalu said the impact of climate change in developing countries would worsen poverty and increase hunger because of a rise in food prices.
The two-week conference in New Delhi will discuss global warming and ways to check its impact through emission control. Mohamed Elyazghi, the outgoing president of the convention, urged all nations to sign up for the Kyoto protocol. ”Those countries who have already joined the protocol have already shown the way and we urge all parties to jump on the train which is already moving,” he told the conference.
He said the task at hand for the UN Climate Change conference in New Delhi was to translate decisions on reducing emissions into specific action. The conference here is due to discuss preparations for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.
One of the most complex environmental treaties ever attempted, Kyoto requires industrialised countries — but not developing ones — to make specific cuts in their output of carbon-based gases from their 1990 levels by a deadline of 2008-2012.
The protocol can take effect only after it has been ratified by at least 55 countries accounting for at least 55% of carbon dioxide emissions. – Sapa-AFP