Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that developing economies had a right to develop and must be given strong incentives for growing in a more climate-friendly manner.
Addressing a thematic plenary of the high-level event on climate change, which is being held on the sideline of the General Debate of the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly, Stoltenberg said that the discussion was not meant to negotiate, but to share ideas on financing the response to climate change.
The focus of the plenary is how to finance that mitigation, he stressed, adding that the report of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on investment and financial flows stated that, in 2030, an additional 200 billion U.S. dollars would be needed.
However, those costs were small compared with the cost that would be incurred by the devastation caused by delay, he noted.
A stage had been reached already where significant impacts could not be avoided, Stoltenberg said, emphasizing that those impacts would be most harshly felt by those who had contributed least to the problem.
Industrialized countries must take the greatest responsibility, he claimed, adding developing economies had a right to develop and must be given strong incentives for growing in a more climate- friendly manner.
Stoltenberg also stressed that the task today is to explore the public policy instrument and the private sector's role, which could mobilize those funds.
"Little could we have conceived, when we began our political careers, the nature and magnitude of the challenge of climate change that we now face," he said. "This is the time, and this is the place to rise to it. I know we will."
The event, convened by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is to discuss the climate challenge in order to prepare the way for remarkable negotiations in December, which seeks to determine future action on mitigation, adaptation, the global carbon market and financing responses to climate change for the period after the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol - the current global framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions - in 2012.
Four simultaneous plenary sessions on addressing the challenges of climate change on all fronts are being held on four themes: adaptation, mitigation, technology and financing.
Each session will be chaired by two heads of State, and speakers include world leaders and other delegation heads, as well as representatives of civil society and the private sector.
Source: Xinhua
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