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All Talk? Climate change and Copenhagen

    

                                  MRDF supporters campaign in London             

 

At the start of a new decade, the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen already feels like yesterday's news. Despite 50,000 people marching through London and hundreds of MRDF supporters writing messages to Gordon Brown urging him to act decisively to keep climate change below 2 degrees, it feels as if the world has moved on.

Sadly, Copenhagen did not fulfil the expectations of campaigners. Simeon Mitchell from MRDF said: ‘It is deeply frustrating that leaders failed to set the emissions targets needed to prevent catastrophic global warming. While the agreement reached in Copenhagen refers to the goal of keeping climate change below 2 degrees, it does nothing to enforce it. There is no agreed time frame and no collective target for cutting emissions. It simply does not go far enough. The world's poorest and most vulnerable people will continue to suffer as a direct result of the actions of developed nations.'

Karen Inwood, director of an MRDF partner in El Salvador, understands better than most people the devastating effect that a rapidly changing climate is having on communities in the developing world: She says: ‘Every year climate change is having more and more impact on us. As much as people improve their farming practice, when a climate-related disaster like hurricane Ida comes, there is massive soil erosion and the land just slips away and crops rot in the ground. Whenever this happens it affects the poorest people the most. We're seeing climate change impacting us more and more every year. No one knows when the rainy season will start or end. It's impossible to know when to plant crops. Increasingly we're seeing more and more crop losses.'

MRDF has committed to continue campaigning about climate change on behalf of its partners in the developing world. Anna Rogers from MRDF said: ‘It is imperative that Copenhagen does not become yesterday's news. Climate change is an issue that affects all of our futures. A strong treaty will save millions of lives world-wide. We have a responsibility to encourage world leaders to reconvene the talks at the earliest opportunity, to strengthen the existing accord and turn this into a legally binding agreement.'

If you would like more information about climate change, click here to visit the Stop Climate Chaos website.