Trocaire blogs
Minister Gormley speaks out on Adaptation - by Niamh Garvey
12-12-2008
"If the world can afford to spend trillions on armaments and billions on banks, then surely we can mobilise the neccessary resources to help poor people adapt to climate change" - Minister Gormley
Yesterday saw the high level section of the climate negotiations in Poznan begin. Ministers flew in from around the world for the last days of what has felt like a long two weeks.
In the afternoon's a high-level roundtable Ministers shared their views on what a ‘long term vision' for tackling climate change would look like.
Minister Gormley, representing Ireland emphasised the critical issue of adaptation in his intervention. He argued that we must tackle climate change in order to ensure that efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals are not undermined.
He acknowledged that the money needed for adaptation is very significant, and will require scaling finance up to ‘tens of billions' of dollars by the international community. Crucially, the Minister acknowledged that this will require innovative sources of finance that are predictable, adequate and additional. This statement by the Minister is really welcome, a clear statement of the Government's position on this issue. Here in Poznan, and as we progress this year towards the conclusion of the Bali Action Plan negotiations we need to now see this delivered on.
In the overall talks adaptation and financing remain contentious. In particular disagreement continues over the Adaptation Fund, which many hoped would be a positive outcome from Poznan. Yesterday in the opening of the high-level segment, the President of Tuvalu spoke of the Adaptation Fund as ‘the survival Fund' for small island states.
As I type a small group of negotiators are trying to ensure a compromise agreement on the legal status of the Fund that will hopefully be agreed here. If not there could be delays of another year before it is finally put into operation. An outcome is expected sometime later this morning.
Comments
13-12-2008 by: MAPS thematic study group
Hi there We are here in Central America on the MAPS thematic study visit on DRR and witnessing the impacts of Climate Change here. We welcome Minister Gormley's comments and congratulate the advocacy work of Irish organisations on this issue
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