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China gives $6mn for south-south coop on climate change
September 23, 2014, 5:04 am

 

Protestors take part in the "flood Wall Street" demonstrations against climate change in New York, the United States, Sept. 22, 2014 [Xinhua]

Protestors take part in the “flood Wall Street” demonstrations against climate change in New York, the United States, Sept. 22, 2014 [Xinhua]

As world leaders struggle to reinvigorate flagging work on a UN deal to limit temperature rises, China on Monday announced $6 million to support UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in promoting South-South cooperation on climate change.

In New York, Zhang met Ban as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special envoy ahead of Tuesday’s UN Climate Summit.

The UN is hoping for “bold pledges” at the September 23 summit to limit emissions, which scientists say cause more heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels.

A climate change march in New York on Sunday attracted 310,000 people with signs that read “Flood Wall Street” even as around a hundred protestors were arrested on Monday outside the New York Stock Exchange.

China attached “great importance to the issue of climate change as well as the role of the UN in tackling the issue”, Zhang told Ban on Monday. More than 120 leaders, including US President Barack Obama, are expected to attend the one-day climate summit.

Developing nations often complain that they need far more aid to help rein in rising greenhouse gas emissions as part of a 200-nation UN deal to limit global warming that is due to be agreed in late 2015 at a summit in Paris.

Developed nations promised in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year, from public and private sources, by 2020 to help developing nations cope with climate change.

In November last year, 133 developing and poor nations – known as the G77 + China – walked out of a UN conference saying that the costs they were asked to pay for environmental reform were much too high and that they were receiving far too little international support for L&D.

BRICS members Brazil, India, China and South Africa supported the walkout.

China and India have called on developed nations, who were the first to industrialise and produce byproduct pollutants, to take the initiative on climate change.

The Chinese presidential envoy on Monday stressed on increasing multilateralism in the world and safeguarding the post-WWII world order.

“As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the largest developing country, China will continue to work for multilateralism and boost its cooperation with the UN,” Zhang said.

Ban lauded China’s role in dealing with the Ebola epidemic, and other global hotspots like Afghanistan and South Sudan.

 

TBP and Agencies