The climate summit in Paris must agree on an international agreement which will be effective in fighting climate change. The biggest priority for the summit will be to develop such an agreement with the necessary elements to progressively increase ambition in the coming years and decades.

The UN aggregate analysis report of the national climate contributions shows that the world is on track for even more dangerous impacts of climate change than estimated up to now. It is imperative that the Paris Agreement puts in place frameworks that will help countries review and increase their climate action and commitments.

As a global alliance of faith-based development and humanitarian NGOs, ACT Alliance has quite some experience with communities suffering from challenges related to global warming – and the future is frightening.

The analysis shows how governments have made very different plans, hence making comparison difficult and essentially hindering global cooperation to raise ambition.

According to the co-chair of the ACT Alliance advisory group on climate change advocacy, Mattias Söderberg, we need an agreement based on transparency and accountability, with clear rules in the implementation. “Countries must agree on how to focus, so that cooperation can be promoted.” 

Considering the need to scale up ambition, the time frames for national commitments become crucial.

“The analysis underlines the need to have a short revision and commitment period. There is a need also to reconsider and scale-up national actions, and therefore the agreement must not lock in low ambition for many years”, Mattias Söderberg continues.

It is important to note that the actions of developing countries should be supported and boosted by financial support from developed countries.

According to Söderberg climate finance is urgently needed.

“It is evident that the full amount of actions needed, will not happen unless concrete support is provided. The Paris agreement must include a strong finance element, ensuring scaled up finance in the coming years.’’

 

For further comments, please contact the head of the ACT Alliance delegation, Mattias Söderberg, tel.: +45-29700609, email: msd@dca.dk