United Nations Welcome to the United Nations. It's your world.

SENATOR LEGARDA CALLS ON NATIONS TO IMMEDIATELY RATIFY PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

Friday, April 22, 2016 - 09:15

 

 

Senator Loren Legarda calls on the international community to ratify the Paris Agreement on Climate Change within the year at the High Level Informal Event following the signing ceremony on 24 April 2016 at the United Nations Headquarters

 

 

22 April 2016, New York – Philippine Senator Loren Legarda called on the 175 countries that signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to immediately ratify the Agreement for its early entry into force.

 

The Philippines, along with 174 countries, signed the Paris Climate Agreement, the largest number of signatures any treaty has garnered on the first day of opening for signature. To date, 15 countries have ratified the Agreement. For the Paris Agreement to enter into force, 55 Parties, representing at least 55 percent of global emissions, must join.

 

“The Philippines joins you here today to take that next step and affirm our commitment to undertake and complete domestic processes to bring the Agreement into effect within

 

Macintosh HD:private:var:folders:qs:1w6xpmw15z79q7n__ynh029h0000gn:T:com.apple.iChat:Messages:Transfers:IMG_8723.PNG 

 

this year,” Senator Legarda said at the High Level Informal Event for the early entry into force of the Paris Agreement.

 

The event was convened by the Marshall Islands, Palau, Grenada, Fiji, Mali, Canada, Maldives and Norway. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry also participated in the event.

 

“We will muster all the energy and resources within our means, sustain advocacy at the grassroots level, and rally the executive and legislative branches of the Philippine government, as well as the local government units, through the Union of Local Legislators, so that the Philippines can be true to its commitment in Paris to keep a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” she added.

 

The Senator committed to rally the Philippine Senate to act on the Philippines’ own ratification of the Agreement.  

 

Senator Legarda has written to fellow Parliamentarians of the 43 countries making up the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) urging them to do the same.

 

“I call on them, and on my fellow legislators in the Women in Parliaments Global Forum, my fellow policy-makers in GLOBE International, and everyone who values life and our future -- let us continue to rally our networks, organizations, and civil society in ensuring that our governments keep the promises they delivered in Paris,” she said.

 

Senator Legarda joined a press conference among Ministers of High Ambition Coalition where she stressed that the purpose of the Paris Agreement is for all parties to take efforts to limit warming to not more than 1.5 degrees.

 

She added that the Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved without 1.5 degrees and the other key priorities from the Paris Agreement: $100 billion in additional finance, technology, capacity building, addressing loss and damage and human rights respect.

 

Moreover, she underscored that swifter progress to the US$100 billion of additional public and private finance that countries must plan for from 2020 to 2025, and fulfillment of additional versus independent official development assistance (ODA) commitments, is vital.

 

“We have always agreed to maintain a balance in adaptation and mitigation in climate finance… We cannot only show ambition on emissions, it also has to show humanitarian ambition to help those on the frontline that are feeling the brunt of the impact. Most donors are in any case suffering huge emergency relief bills for want of not having invested adequately in resilience–so not investing in adaptation is not a practical approach even for developed countries. A 50:50 balance in international climate finance between adaptation and mitigation need to be achieved by 2020 as a humanitarian priority,” she said. END