Annan calls for urgent action to combat global warming

Warning of an urgent need for real progress in dealing with the causes and consequences of climate change, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on governments to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and to do much more besides.

“The Kyoto Protocol is an essential first step in this direction, and its entry into force is of utmost importance. But of course, much more effort will be needed,” Mr. Annan said in a message to the ninth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Milan, Italy, delivered by Jose Antonio Ocampo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.

United States President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, and published reports this month said Russia had also decided to reject it. Without either United States or Russian support the treaty cannot go into effect, and in September Mr. Annan appealed to Russia to ratify it.

“More and more people are coming to understand that the mitigation and adaptation to climate change is a vast undertaking that will require a sustained effort for decades to come, and will affect many realms of human endeavour,” Mr. Annan said in today’s message.

The 188-member UNFCCC’s ultimate objective is to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

As the session met, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reported that natural disasters, the lion's share of them weather-related, cost the world over $60 billion this year, up from around $55 billion in 2002.