Special Envoy to the French President for the Protectiin of the Planet Nicolas Hulot is in the Philippines this week to prepare for the state visit next month of President Francois Hollande. He has met with government officials, including key legislators like Senator Loren Legarda, and representatives of citizen organizations. Yesterday, we were fortunate in the Ateneo de Manila University to host him in a forum with professors and students where he exhorted us to work for a successful Paris conference. In his words, what is at stake in Paris is not just the future of climate but the future of humanity itself. During the forum, I was also asked to share my thoughts about the Paris meeting. First, I reflected on the question of why this 21st meeting of the climate change convention was important. I told the audience of young people that this was about what kind of world they will have in 20 to 30 years, explaining to them that the Paris Agreement will be for 2020-2030 and if we fail or we have a bad agreement, that would mean nothing meaningful will be done to address climate change in the next two decades. Second, I suggested what a Paris Agreement should look like to call the meeting a success: it must be ambitious, it must contain both mitigation and adaptation and mechanisms to support developing countries to do both of these. And finally, I pointed to what the Philippines must do in the next year so we become influential in the negotiations. As I have said before, we should not blame other countries but instead take the lead on doing things ourselves and then ask our negotiation partners what in turn they would be doing. In the future, the challenge before our negotiators would be how to strike up the right alliances with other countries so we have more influence on the negotiations. The government must identify credible and skilled lead negotiators that will steer us to a position of influence, including the President appointing a special envoy like Mr. Hulot to lead our negotiators. The Ateneo School of Government will of course continue to help the government because we are already recognized internationally for our work in the negotiations.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:18:43 +0000
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