Fiji is kicking its global consensus-building efforts into overdrive this year to secure decisive, ambitious climate action.
Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Satyendra Prasad said Fiji’s Mission in New York was building a unified approach among regional and international partners in the call for urgency and action towards climate adaptation.
He said COP25 2019 held in Madrid, Spain, showed there was still a lot of work that needed to be achieved in terms of combatting climate change.
In a Government statement issued this evening, he said reducing global warming to 1.5°C was a global imperative.
“Fiji cannot do it alone. Small Island Developing States cannot do it by themselves. All countries will need to be fully committed to this,” Mr Prasad said in the statement.
He said the inclusion of oceans was a testament to Fiji’s advocacy on oceans.
“This is a significant achievement for Fiji. Fiji and Sweden co-hosted the first UN Oceans Conference at the United Nations in New York in 2017. The world has slowly come around to our view – that the ocean is at the centre stage and not the sidelines of our global effort to fight climate change.
“There is still much to be done in order to bring about radical changes in the attitudes of the developed countries of large corporations and consumers.”
Mr Prasad says climate change is a human rights crisis and it adversely affects people’s rights to basic necessities like health, housing, water, and food.
