2018-12-11 20:54 update: 2018-12-15, 13:00
Photo: PAP/PAP/Andrzej Grygiel
Poland believes that the 2015 Paris Agreement offers a historic opportunity for sustainable and peaceful development, Environment Minister Henryk Kowalczyk said on Tuesday at the COP24 climate summit in Katowice, southern Poland.
Addressing the conference, Kowalczyk pointed out that Poland was among the agreement's first signatories, and stressed that the COP24 conference's aim was to lay down a roadmap for its implementation.
"Poland believes that the Paris Agreement is a historic opportunity for the world's sustained and peaceful development in keeping with sovereign goals and with the help of the diverse instruments and mechanisms of international cooperation. (...) The world needs the Katowice package to enable effective control over rising temperatures and the construction of a climate-neutral world," Kowalczyk said.
Commenting on the COP24 talks so far, Kowalczyk said all sides showed the will for compromise, but stressed that the attainment of the conference's goals required still more effort. He added that Poland was in the course of transforming its energy system, which promised "effects of importance for climate protection."
Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), cited COP24 chairman Michał Kurtyka's earlier words that the Paris Agreement will not be successful without success in the Katowice talks. Espinosa said that after ten days of the COP24 talks she "had faith" in its success, but observed that many issues remained unresolved. In this context she mentioned the financing of climate protection measures, especially in the developing economies.
Hoesung Lee, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), gave his assurance that global warming was a fact, and stressed that the response to it lay with individual countries.
In October, the IPCC published a much-discussed report confirming the negative impact of climate change. According to its authors, reducing temperature growth to 1.5 degrees against the pre-industrial era was still possible and provided a chance of avoiding the consequences of climate change. (PAP)
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