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UN chief calls for end to coal addiction
GLOBAL
ASIA is particularly vulnerable to climate change and must reduce its dependency on coal, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said at the weekend.
“This region is highly vulnerable, particularly to rising sea-levels, with catastrophic conse- quences for low-lying communities, as recently published research illustrated,” he told the ASE- AN-UN meeting in Bangkok.
He stressed that 70% of the global popula- tion most at risk of rising sea-levels were within ASEAN member states.
The UN chief has been a strong advocate for progress on carbon pricing, ensuring no new coal plants by 2020, and ending the allocation of trillions of taxpayer dollars for the fossil fuel subsidies that result in hurricanes, spread tropi- cal diseases and heighten conflict.
“I am particularly worried about the future impact of the high number of new coal power plantsstillprojectedinsomepartsoftheworld, including several countries in East, South and South-East Asia,” he warned.
“There is an addiction to coal that we need to overcome because it remains a major threat in relation to climate change,” he said.
At the same time, Guterres maintained that developed countries “must fulfil their commit- ment” to provide $100bn a year by 2020 for mit- igation and adaptation in developing countries.
He also warned that the world was miss- ing the UN’s sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), claiming that the world was still “far off track”.
He stressed that there were still people being left behind even as organisations such as ASEAN were lifting millions out of poverty.
In terms of politics, he expressed the fear that rising US-China tensions were “another concern emerging on the horizon”.
He warned about the emergence of what he termed “a Great Fracture”, where the two world’s largest economies split the globe in half – each with its own “dominant currency, trade and financial rules...internet and artificial intelli- gence capacities, and its own zero-sum geopo- liticalandmilitarystrategies”.
“We must do everything possible to avert this Great Fracture,” the UN chief stressed, emphasis- ing the importance of maintaining a world with strong multilateral institutions and a universal economy with respect for international law.™
Nations Secretary- General António Guterres speaking at the ASEAN-UN meeting in Bangkok
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 44 06•November•2019