Original report from Phnom Penh
07 December 2009
Cambodia will ask the industrialized nations of the world to reduce greenhouse gas emission during the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next week, an environment official said Saturday.
“We will call on industrialized countries to cut down on much of their emissions of greenhouse gases to resolve the climate change problem,” said Tin Ponlok, deputy director of the Ministry of Environment and one of the Cambodian officials who works on climate change.
Cambodia will also urge the industrialized nations to provide developing countries with technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and money to respond to national problems resulting from climate change, Tin Ponlok said.
The Climate Change Conference will be held from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18.
Developing countries have received an estimated $300 million for help adapting to climate change, but experts say the real need will reach billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Cambodia has taken its own measures to respond to climate change, including a program of national activities approved by the Council of Ministers in 2006, Tin Ponlok said, without elaborating.
Industrialized countries like China, Russia and the United States are among the worst global polluters and thought to be responsible for global warming, through greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide and methane.
In October, the UN’s resident coordinator in Cambodia, Douglas Broderick, warned Cambodia that failure to deal with climate change could undermine the nation’s “millennium development goals,” causing problems in the economy and in social development.
Over the past five years, Cambodia has suffered floods, droughts and storms that could be attributed to climate change, said Tep Bunnarith, executive director of the Culture and Environment Preservation Association.
“We will call on industrialized countries to cut down on much of their emissions of greenhouse gases to resolve the climate change problem,” said Tin Ponlok, deputy director of the Ministry of Environment and one of the Cambodian officials who works on climate change.
Cambodia will also urge the industrialized nations to provide developing countries with technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and money to respond to national problems resulting from climate change, Tin Ponlok said.
The Climate Change Conference will be held from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18.
Developing countries have received an estimated $300 million for help adapting to climate change, but experts say the real need will reach billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Cambodia has taken its own measures to respond to climate change, including a program of national activities approved by the Council of Ministers in 2006, Tin Ponlok said, without elaborating.
Industrialized countries like China, Russia and the United States are among the worst global polluters and thought to be responsible for global warming, through greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide and methane.
In October, the UN’s resident coordinator in Cambodia, Douglas Broderick, warned Cambodia that failure to deal with climate change could undermine the nation’s “millennium development goals,” causing problems in the economy and in social development.
Over the past five years, Cambodia has suffered floods, droughts and storms that could be attributed to climate change, said Tep Bunnarith, executive director of the Culture and Environment Preservation Association.
3 comments:
Cambodia, Don't even bother. Save your money and don't go to this stupid conference. Climate Change is a HOAX! All Cambodia will get from this conference is a pat on the head and be told to shut up and color. If you think you are poor now wait till the good caring rich fat global warming hoaxsters get done with you. "Climate change" is a natural cycle of the Earth. You threw off the shackles of communism don't shackle yourself with the new communism. Green is the new Red...star.
Listening to the Cambodian Foreign Minister's speech on climate change at the UN recently one could be forgiven for thinking that Cambodia belongs on another planet and not a country in the grip of self-made ecological disasters of its own. Who would have thought such speeches could be made by representatives of a country with Cambodia's environmental record? On every front visible to the eyes or the casual curiosity of even a detached observer, there is a grim reminder of ruthless officialdom at work, fuelled by the bait of dark Finance, invariably siphoned off into private bank accounts and selective pockets with the state coffer having to make do with whatever is allowed to filter through into it. Just how much is destined for that public coffer, though, is not worth the attention or time of even an earnest junior accountant.
I once took a domestic flight over the North-East of Thailand and, as domestic planes normally fly at low altitude, was sadden to see much of that region's brown, dusty plane with only arid skeletons of what once had been a mighty green rain forest. However, one has to give credit to the Thai state for taking the trouble to raise the general living standard of their population, even if the North-East is the least affluent of Thailand.
I do not condemn officials or individuals for wanting to enrich themselves or their families, but there ought to be a thought given to the welfare of the country's vast majority who have also been made to endure so much already in the last forty years or more. Where is the evidence to support the presumption that out of collective suffering arises compassion? How could men erect personal palaces and enclosures that rival in extent and wealth the ancient compounds of Angkor whilst their downtrodden compatriots still navigate the sticky mud and contaminated flood at Psa Chas or Psa Kandal as they endeavour to eke out a living or collect their daily food supply? How much will it cost municipal authorities to build sound, clean amenities for the general public to enjoy?
Let's not detest outsiders for their purported superiority complex if your own people are condemned to remain in grinding poverty and as de facto second-rate citizens in their own country. Throughout the nation roads are constantly being built, but they are subsequently also being damaged by overloaded commercial trucks and vehicles that transport raw materials such as rocks quarried out of entire ancient mountain sides; logs felled in once rich green provinces; sand dredged from river beds causing whole flanks of river banks to collapse into rivers, immediately depriving people not only of their lands, but seriously choking and impairing the artery systems and the life-forms that they support as many of these waterways funnelled into vital natural reservoirs such as Tonle Sap and other smaller flatlands along the Mekong.
Even if the industrialised nations of the world were to reduce their gas emissions to 10 percent, small, mismanaged countries like Cambodia would still be confronted with regular devastating flooding, deadly storms and increased temperature, precisely because the natural defence mechanisms that had once been in place to absorb and neutralise these raw forces of nature are no longer there.
And so, we are reminded of that well worn stricture that charity begins at home.
MP
The only way to control the climate change are not to cut down the trees. Keep the country ever green to defend against bad weather and to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen.
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