Declaration on climate change and COP21

Meeting of the SI Council at the United Nations, New York, 6-7 July 2015

Original: Spanish

At  its  Council  Meeting  in  New  York  on  the  6-­‐7  July  2015,  the  Socialist  International  addressed  the question of climate change and the challenges faced by the international community, in the light of the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris at the end of this year and what it might achieve.

Climate change is a constant concern of the organization and as such occupies a preeminent place on its agenda. Given the seriousness of the effects of this phenomenon at the global level, and the impact they have on security and human development, the search for an equitable and just solution to climate change requires the mobilization of everyone’s capacities. The International, with its Commission for a Sustainable Global Society and its report From a High to a Low Carbon Economy, has made this a core issue for its member parties and central to their political proposals.

We must adopt profound changes in lifestyles and models of production and consumption. We must limit  the  use  of  non-­‐renewable  resources,  moderate  consumption,  maximise  efficiency,  re-­‐use  and recycle. The most serious effects of environmental damage are  suffered  by  the  poorest and  those  with  the least protection, migrants amongst others. The financial crisis of 2008 has not created a new form of regulation which would rethink the obsolete criteria that continue to govern the world and affect its environment, pleading for the conservation of the latter and the care of the weakest in society.

Last Friday, the 3rd of July, a group of 36 Nobel Laureates, meeting on the island of Mainau on Lake Constance in Germany produced a declaration on climate change, recalling that 60 years ago, in exactly the same place, other Nobel Laureates had warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons. The threat that now faces the planet is of a comparable magnitude, they maintained. The predictions derived from climate models indicate that it is very probable that over the next century the Earth’s temperature will rise  by  more  than  2  °C  above  its  pre-­‐industrial  level,  unless  over  the  next  decades  there  are  major reductions in anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. And they conclude by demanding that the opportunity offered by the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015 be used to take decisive measures to limit future global emissions.

From the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, the Socialist International renews its political commitment to this great global task. Paris must present to the international community a universally binding agreement, with common commitments and properly differentiated demands, precise objectives and up to date scientific evaluations, just as the organization has been demanding for many years.

 

_______________