Insufficient progress in Durban will cost lives

The failure of governments to agree sufficient action at the UN’s climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, threatens to increase the climate-related death toll in developing countries.

SCIAF’s Lexi Barnett, who attended the talks in Durban last month commented:

“Insufficient progress at the UN’s climate change summit is likely to cost many lives in developing countries.

While some positive progress has been made towards agreeing a global legal framework, the major industrialised countries have failed yet again to agree to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in line with what scientists believe is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.

The need for a single global treaty to come into force in the future has therefore also been agreed at the negotiations. However the terms of the pact have fallen well short of the ambition needed to hold dangerous climate change in check. Proposals to implement the global system by 2015 were blocked and delaying action until 2020 means vital years will be lost, during which the gap between commitments and what action is needed will only widen.

With 300,000 climate related deaths every year already, mainly in developing countries, this lack of ambition is unacceptable.

Climate change highlights a huge injustice in which the wealthy industrialised nations have created a global problem but poor developing nations are suffering the consequences. We have to keep pushing for action from our leaders.”