UN stresses public, private partnerships to fight climate change in Asia and Pacific
With Pacific island nations and low-lying coastal areas facing a growing threat from the effects of global warming, a senior United Nations official in the Asia and Pacific region today stressed the importance of public-private sector cooperation in combating the phenomenon.
Many developing countries in the region have already taken steps to reduce emissions and implement cleaner air policies, said Kim Hak-Su, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in his keynote address to a regional meeting on the environment, which got under way today in Bangkok.
But for more to be done, Mr. Kim added, developing nations needed “substantial assistance from developed countries that are largely responsible for the predicament of climate change and the potential impacts of global warming.”
The three-day Asia-Pacific Workshop on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and National Strategy Studies on Climate Change brings together energy and conservation experts from both the public and private sectors to discuss the Kyoto Protocol – a key environmental treaty meant to cut so-called greenhouse gas emissions – and its implementation in the region.
The workshop, which is being attended by over 100 participants from 20 countries, private industry and the World Bank, will also focus on “emission trading” between developed and developing countries, and ways for private industry to capitalize on CDM.