Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says the sense of adrenaline-fuelled urgency of the Australian firefighters who are forced to risk their lives to contain the bushfires should inspire the world to act on climate change.
He says our prayers are with Australia but prayers alone will not turn back the tides of the climate crisis facing the world and for that meaningful action is needed.
In a letter to The Guardian, Bainimarama says that with every additional degree of average global warming, the scale and frequency of wildfires will increase exponentially, as will the intensity of heat-driven tropical cyclones.
Bainimarama says that people are now understanding more acutely than ever before, the maximum threshold for global average temperature rise must not exceed 1.5C – a limit that serves to interests of all countries, especially those at our southern latitudes.
The Prime Minister says that unlike international negotiations, firefighters and rescue workers do not have the luxury of sitting at conference tables when they are forced to risk their lives to contain these kinds of disasters.
He says that in the climate change arena when delegations from around the world gather in conference rooms to negotiate the best path forward to ensure a habitable planet for future generations, leaders need to be delicate when referencing any attribution between individual disasters and global temperature rise.
He adds that this is because, while climate science is crystal clear, global climate politics remain murky, mired in fear of disrupting the status quo.
Bainimarama says he is exhausted by the lack of accountability that comes from this type of tip-toeing.
The COP23 President says that people do not need to be scientists to know in their hearts that something is very, very wrong here.
He says we know that things are getting worse and as the world gets hotter and drier, fires will continue to burn, landscapes and critical ecosystems will continue to be turned to ash, lives will continue to be lost.
He says that while 2020 began bleak in the fight against climate change and was ominously foreshadowed by the disappointing outcomes of COP25, high emitters dug in their heels and lacked real ambition; however, people must not be left feeling defeated.
Bainimarama says COP26 in Glasgow later this year will give them a critical opportunity to make meaningful commitments that are needed to radically and systematically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
He says that people should not take the privileges they have enjoyed for decades for granted.
He adds that children and grandchildren deserve the chance to dive reefs to see their great beauty rather than the bleached remains of an acidic ocean.
The Prime Minister says that they deserve to see koalas roam in their natural habitats, rather than drive through a charred landscape and ash and they also deserve clean drinking water, to live in the communities where they have lived for generations, and to live not in fear of nature’s wrath, but in harmony with its beauty.
He also adds that if inaction is chosen, this crisis for future generations will be fanned, but instead, a different path is chosen and a commitment is made to achieving net-zero emissions, people can still win this fight for their lives.
Source - fijivillage
