Independentie
| 12.1°C Dublin
Menu Sections
Menu Sections
Premium subscribers enjoy unlimited access to all articles. But there’s more: discover your full benefits now.
Close
Mary Robinson addresses audience at COP27
/
Caroline O'Doherty
CLIMATE champion and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson has criticised the world’s richest countries for failing to live up to their climate commitments.
Mrs Robinson, who arrived at the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt on Saturday, said leaders of wealthy nations needed to “step up” and deliver on their promises.
“I didn’t hear much leadership from the G20 countries,” she said of the statements delivered by heads of state earlier in the week.
“In fact half the leaders were not here.”
The leaders of China, India, Russia, Brazil and the US were not present for the world leaders segment that opened the summit.
US President Joe Biden stayed behind to deal with mid-term elections at home and came for a short spell on Friday instead.
Mrs Robinson acknowledged his late arrival but said: “Even the United States has not stepped up enough on climate finance and certainly hasn’t stepped up enough on reducing emissions.”
Her comments came a day after Minister for Overseas Development Aid, Colm Brophy, also singled out the US for criticism.
He said President Biden made strong calls to action but there was “no point in keeping on saying that unless you actually come out of here and live it in a meaningful way”.
Get ahead of the day with the morning headlines at 7.30am and Fionnán Sheahan's exclusive take on the day's news every afternoon, with our free daily newsletter.
This field is required
The G20 are meeting in Bali next week and Mrs Robinson said a message must be delivered to them that they needed to do more.
“You must step up and commit your and make sure that we must stay below 1.5 degrees,” she said.
She said she was worried that the pledge of the 2015 Paris Agreement to to take action to stop global temperature rise exceeding 1.5 degrees was being abandoned.
“We have, not a target, but a limit, a scientific limit of a liveable world and therefore we have to adhere to that,” she said.
She welcomed the inclusion of loss and damage funding for climate-damaged countries on the Cop agenda for the first time but said there must be concrete action on it when the summit ended.
She pointed out that $1.8 trillion was being spent in subsidising fossil fuels and other high-emission sectors “to support what is destroying us”.
“It’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” she said.
Mrs Robinson also drew attention to the lack of protest at this year’s Cop.
“I am sorry that there is not as much marching or as much protesting. It’s a pity because of the environment in this country,” she said.
The discussion she addressed also heard from climate campaigners from Uganda and the Marshall Islands.
Ugandan activist, Constance Okollet, said her country was witnessing climate havoc, most recently being hit by deadly floods outside of traditional rainy seasons.
“Cop is talking, talking, talking, talking when people are dying, dying, dying, dying,” she said.
Minister Brophy also addressed the event, returning to his earlier criticisms and saying he was “fed up” with people who came to Cop with talk of action and walked away doing nothing.
“They do not seem to realise that the implications of their inaction is children dying in the Horn of Africa,” he said.
He backed the call for greatly increased finance for climate-vulnerable nations.
“We must put money where our mouths are,” he said.
Premium
Premium
Independentie
A Mediahuis Website © Independent.ie