President joins world leaders in calling for emissions cuts

Pramod de Silva in New York

UN: World leaders including President Mahinda Rajapaksa raised their voices against global warming at the first UN Summit on Climate Change on Monday, warning that the world would face a bleak future if greenhouse emissions are not cut.

President Rajapaksa was among the 80 Heads of State and Government who attended the one-day session formally titled "Future in Our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change".

Another 70 countries were represented at ministerial level.

The President's speech which drew the attention of the world to the importance of financing the response to climate change as an investment for tomorrow struck a chord with the other leaders, many of whom pointed out the importance of investing in technologies and methodologies that cut drastically greenhouse gas emissions.

Many leaders from the developing world stressed the importance of the developed world taking initiatives to cut emissions. A number of industrialised countries including the United States have not endorsed the Kyoto Protocol which aims to take the world in that direction. President George W. Bush is hosting a separate climate change forum on Thursday in Washington.

California's environmentalist governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger echoed the developing world's sentiments when he called for "action, action, action," on climate change.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon set the tone in his opening address, declaring that "the time for doubt has passed" on the issue of global warming. He said world leaders showed a "major political commitment" to achieve success in the global talks.

The UN chief described the UN "the only forum" where the issues can be decided. The chief UN climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri told the summit of the evidence of global warming's impact, including the accelerating rise in sea levels as oceans. "The time is up for inaction," he declared.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the summit that the 16-nation Washington Summit would "support and help advance the on going U.N. discussion." Former Vice President Al Gore, a leading climate campaigner, portrayed a dire picture of changes already under way because of global warming, including last week's scientific report that the Arctic ice cap this summer shrank to a record-small size.

He proposed that Heads of State meet every three months beginning in 2008 to ensure the world is doing all it can to end the threat.

The UN Climate Change Summit is widely seen as a precursor to December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, when Europe, Japan and many developing countries hope to initiate talks for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

The 175-nation Kyoto Pact, which the US (the biggest producer of greenhouse gases) rejects, requires 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. It set an average target of a 5 per cent cut below 1990 levels by 2012 for emissions from power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transport sources.