S. Africa wants climate agreement to defend legal rights of developing countries

A future climate agreement should defend the legal rights of developing countries, South African President Jacob Zuma said on Thursday.

Developing countries should receive the support they require to make the transition to a low carbon economy and to adapt to the reality of a climate that is already changing and the loss and damage that is associated with this, Zuma said.

He was expounding South Africa's position on climate change ahead of 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to be held in Paris at the end of November through to mid-December.

"This is an historic opportunity for the international community to respond to the challenge of climate change collectively and with a renewed sense of urgency by adopting an agreement with supporting decisions under the Convention that will contain legal obligations for all countries to take actions to address climate change," Zuma said.

This agreement has to set the world on a trajectory to keep the increase in average global temperature since the start of the industrial era to below two degrees centigrade, said Zuma.

"Our message ahead of Paris is that climate change is a global problem, requiring a global solution, which can only be effectively addressed multilaterally, under the broad based legitimacy of the UNFCCC and with all Parties contributing their fair share," Zuma noted.

As the current Chair of the Group of 77 and China and an active member of the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN) and Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) Group, South Africa has the special responsibility of advancing the collective and shared interests of developing countries in the negotiations for the Paris Agreement, said Zuma.

The 5th Assessment Report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that each of the past three decades has been successively warmer than the preceding decades and exceed levels reached at the height of the industrial revolution.

"The evidence of accelerating global warming and its devastating impacts are clear for all to see," Zuma said.

He said the provision of financial resources, technology transfer and development and capacity building, is central to the Paris Agreement.

"The reality is that without adequate, predictable and sustainable means of implementation, it will be impossible to reach our agreed temperature target. This is because key mitigation potential is in developing countries, such as South Africa, and these countries are not able to realize this potential on their own," Zuma stressed. Enditem