Commonwealth to mobilize funders, experts to tackle dangers of climate change

The Commonwealth is to outline a strategy to tackle climate change across the planet.

Some of the world's leading environmental experts will meet at a Commonwealth conference on Thursday to see how they can take forward an innovative strategy to reverse the human impact of climate change.

The Commonwealth's aim, according to Secretary-General Patricia Scotland, is to create a new approach which will influence the debate among world leaders when they meet at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany this November.

The Commonwealth's Regenerative Development to Reverse Climate Change Conference, organized in collaboration with the Cloudburst Foundation, is the second meeting of experts convened by the Commonwealth, whose member nations are mostly former nations of the British Empire.

Scotland said: "A pronounced increase in violent storms, floods, drought, desertification and devastating sea level rises -- extreme events such as these are the realities that many people across the Commonwealth wake up to every day."

She said that it was a "truly historic moment" for the Commonwealth as the first inter-governmental organisation to take on the challenge of "flipping the narrative" on climate change.

Scotland said that last October funders and leading experts on climate change, came to the Commonwealth headquarters in London to give a verdict on the feasibility of making reversal rather than mitigation our goal.

"We looked at existing working examples of the regenerative development approach, which mean actions to heal the damage we have caused to the earth and working with nature instead of against nature," said Scotland.

Examples included tapping into the power of volcanic hot springs for electricity, geothermal power plants, regenerating coastal wetlands and constructing buildings that mimic trees in the way they dispose of carbon.

"The unanimous agreement was that, if we have the political will and work together, we can drastically reduce carbon emissions and reverse the human impact of climate change while accelerating economic growth and boosting development," said Scotland.

Scotland will present their findings at the Commonwealth Secretariat's London headquarters on Thursday.

This includes submissions from Project Drawdown, a comprehensive plan with the potential to reverse global warming. Endit