AfDB-Put adaptation atop the climate change agenda, global leaders urge ahead of COP26. 'We are in the eye of the storm'.
ENPNewswire-September 8, 2021--AfDB-Put adaptation atop the climate change agenda, global leaders urge ahead of COP26. 'We are in the eye of the storm'
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Release date- 07092021 - Global leaders stressed the critical urgency of climate adaptation when they came together in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Monday at a meeting of the Friends of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA).
The agenda was the acceleration of adaptation solutions ahead of November's United Nations global climate summit, COP26.
The leaders underlined the imperative for all countries to step up climate adaptation initiatives while mitigating carbon emissions in the global effort to combat climate change. In the presence of H.R.H King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, the meeting was also the occasion to inaugurate the largest floating office in the world in Rotterdam's Rijnhaven, which will serve as the headquarters of the Global Center on Adaptation.
More than fifty leaders from the international climate and development community impressed the need to forge a clear 'adaptation acceleration imperative for COP26'. The meeting concluded with a communique(link is external) adopted in the presence of the Dialogue's co-conveners, namely, Chair of the GCA Board, 8th UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, Patrick Verkooijen; Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva; and UN High-Level Climate Champion on Private Sector for COP26, Feike Sijbesma.
The participants, some of whom joined remotely, included President Felix Antoine Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chair of the African Union; Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice President, European Commission; Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations; Huang Runqiu, Minister of Environment and Ecology of the People's Republic of China; and Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina, President of the African Development Bank.
In August, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its most comprehensive assessment report ever, issuing a somber warning that planetary heating could reach 1.5-degreeC in the next decade, as climate impacts worsen.
Verkooijen stressed that adapting the world to the climate emergency was essential for world safety. 'We are now living in the eye of the storm...From now on we are fighting a battle on two fronts: we have to fight to slash emissions while...
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