Seventh International Media Forum On The Protection of Nature
Viterbo, 25-29 November 2009
Towards Copenaghen: the Viterbo forum will host the world’s foremost authorities
Greenaccord: send an urgent message, a new impulse needed for the negotiations in Copenhagen
The European Council, in its most recent session, confirms the necessity of
reaching a global accord soon
Rome, 5th November 2009 – The climate is changing more rapidly than predicted and the risks are already perceptible. One watches the widespread melting of the glaciers, the rising global sea level, and the increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of floods, droughts, and scorching heat. This is exactly the urgent message that Greenaccord wants to send out with the organization of the Seventh International Media Forum On The Protection of Nature, which will take place in Viterbo from 25 to 29 November, bringing together over a hundred journalists from 51 countries, united to face the theme of climate change, now being examined by the summit in Copenhagen. The foremost global experts in science, economics, and communications will present their work and their research, as well as testimony from all over the globe, which will make the effects of climate change in the everyday life of people and ecosystems plain.
Just a few weeks before the conference in Copenhagen, the European Council, meeting from 28 to 30 October for the express purpose of examining the theme, seems to have decided to play a determining role and to contribute to the reaching of a global accord, one that is both ambitious and complete. What is necessary is that all parties give a new impetus to the negotiation process and that they accelerate its implementation.
“The Copenhagen accord – reads the resolution of the Council – must include ambitious commitments towards the reduction of emissions from the developed countries, and actions to mitigate the emissions on the part of the developing world, as well as commitments towards adaptation, towards technology, and towards a pact for the financing of these goals.” One recognizes the damage caused by the industrialized countries in the course of their history, and one can quantify the economic value of this grievous responsibility.
“The assertions of the European Council,” declared Professor Andrea Masullo, president of the Scientific Committee of Greenaccord, “represent an important acknowledgement of the damage that the model of development of the rich countries provokes in the poor countries, quantifying it in hundreds of billions of euros a year, and introducing the principle of reparations, with the idea of a contribution of between 22 and 50% for the adaptation to the climate changes in the developing world. It is an official acknowledgement of the model of development based on non-renewable high-carbon energy sources, which generates wellbeing in a limited area and damage all over the planet. The European Council underlined the necessity of reaching an accord in Copenhagen that was ‘complete, balanced, and ambitious’. We hope that that a certain group of governments does not prevail, a group which wants Copenhagen to simply be the opportunity to put off, again, a global accord. That position – continued Masullo – is irresponsible considering the growing alarm of the scientific community and unjustifiable in the moment when even the World Bank, during the G8 in Syracuse, affirmed that an ambitious accord on the climate, one which requires investments in clean, renewable technologies, would represent an enormous push for getting through the current economic crisis; unfortunately, in Italy we are still thinking about out-of-date technologies like coal and nuclear power.”
|
