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Asia-Pacific Countries Need Assistance to Achieve Green Agenda Goals, UN Official Says

28 Sep 2009

ESCAP Chief speaks at opening of Bangkok climate talks

Bangkok (UN/ESCAP Information Services) -- Countries in the region are poised and willing to pursue their development interests in an environmentally sound way but needed assistance to make it happen, said Noeleen Heyzer, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), today.

 

“Developing countries in our region have the potential to achieve a resource-efficient, low-carbon development pathway, but they cannot be expected to do this alone,” Dr. Heyzer said in opening remarks to the Bangkok Climate Change Talks taking place at the United Nations Conference Centre.

 

“Let us work together in Bangkok so that there is a breakthrough on the arrangements and provisions for finance and technology for developing countries, which is key to unlocking the current impasse.”

 

Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are meeting from 28 September to 9 October in Bangkok for the next-to-last round of negotiations before a December conference in Copenhagen to finalize a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

 

Following is the full text of opening remarks by Dr. Heyzer at the Opening Session of the United Nations Climate Change Talks on 28 September 2009 in Bangkok:

 

H.E. Mr. Abhisit Vejjajiva, Prime Minister of Thailand,

Mr. Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary UNFCCC,

Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, UN Colleagues,


Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

It is a joy for me to welcome you to the United Nations Climate Change Talks here in Bangkok. Much has happened over the past year and a half since we last met in Bangkok. The world has been hit by triple threats to development – the food-fuel, finance and flu crises. It is still too early to tell if we have fully weathered this storm. What we do know is that nations have been able to turn these threats into opportunities by working together to seek collective solutions. We were able to find the money to prevent the meltdown of our global financial system. We need to find the same commitment and resources to prevent a meltdown of our planet.

 

If climate change is the challenge of our generation it also presents the opportunity of our generation. We need to set aside our differences in this race against time.

 

Read More..

 

Source:UNESCAP