Roundup: UN-backed global partnerships launched to help most vulnerable cushion climate change impacts

Several new UN-backed global partnerships were launched on Wednesday to help the most vulnerable people in the world cushion the impacts of climate change, a UN spokesman told reporters here.

The new global partnerships were launched on the sidelines of the climate change conference in Paris, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

"They include early warning systems for more than 50 of the least developed countries and small island States, as well as providing access to insurance to 400 million people in the most vulnerable countries over the next five years," the spokesman said.

The partnerships recognize how building a climate resilient world is essential to securing hard-won development gains and ensure that future investment is not lost to climate change, Dujarric said.

The conference, also known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 with an aim to yield a new global pact to reduce greenhouse gases beyond 2020 when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires.

On the third day of the conference, dubbed "Resilience Day," the UN and the governments of Peru and France have announced major international partnerships that are mobilizing large-scale financing to protect people who are most vulnerable to climate impacts.

These initiatives are taking place under the Lima to Paris Action Agenda (LPAA), launched one year ago at the previous climate change conference in Peru, and aims to strength climate action beyond COP21.

"Resilience is really important because the climate is already changing, and we need to be able to not just adapt to the changes but actually develop in a way that takes into account that in the future, climate will still change," Janos Pasztor, the UN assistant secretary-general on climate change, told the UN News Service in an interview at the conference site in Paris.

"Even if we stop all the emissions today, there are already enough greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that the climate will continue to change," he said. "So we need to adjust our development process, adjust our economic approach ... and be more resilient to future changes that will happen."

Bold announcements were made at COP21 on Wednesday, which was dedicated to building more resilient societies and economies. According to the UN, extreme climate already impacts hundreds of millions of people every year, undermining or destroying their livelihoods, their homes and their environment.

The Rockefeller Foundation estimates that over the last 30 years, one dollar out of every three spent on development has been lost as a result of such recurring crises, a total loss of 3.8 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. In contrast, resilient societies and economies suffer less and recover more quickly from such natural disasters.

"Resilience -- it is very important when we talk about climate change and its consequences," Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's minister of the environment, said.

"When we talk about resilience, we are talking about how can we resist (...) and avoid negative consequences to our human population," he said. "To the wildlife, to the habitat, to the ecosystems, to the water, to the ocean -- that is why we have the 'Resilience Day.' If climate change is going to bring us natural disasters, we should have the objective of resilience as a way to face those kinds of consequences."

Meanwhile, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) on Wednesday launched a new "Climate Risk Early Warning System," (CREWS), while the governments of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands agreed to give more than 80 million U.S. dollars to equip up to 80 countries with better systems to support countries most vulnerable to climate disasters.

The plan was first proposed in March by French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan.

"Climate related disasters cause human losses and dramatic economic losses each year," said French Secretary of State for Development Annick Girardin.

"We will first help the most exposed countries among (Least Developed Countries) and Small Island States which will be most at risk as the frequency and severity of such hazards are expected to increase in this part of the world," she said.

News from COP21 also included the announcement from a broad coalition of nations, river basin organizations, businesses and civil society groups of the creation of the international Paris Pact on Water and Climate Change Adaptation to make water systems -- considered the very foundation of sustainable human development -- more resilient to climate impacts.

Almost 290 water basin organizations are reportedly engaged under this new Pact. They say without improved water resources management, the progress towards poverty reduction targets, the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and sustainable development in all its economic, social and environmental dimensions will be jeopardized. Enditem