President Peter Mutharika has urged developed countries to help least development countries LDCs such as Malawi build resilience and adaption in the face of climate change.
Mutharika spoke on behalf of LDCs during a Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit of the 74th United Nations General Assembly (Unga) Session.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, world leaders gathered at UN Headquarters in New York for the SDG Summit to review progress and identify measures of accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 goals.
The summit brought together political and thought-leaders from governments, private sector, civil society and international organisations in high-level meetings to turn the 10 years leading up to the 2030 SDGs deadline “into a decade of action and delivery”.
Mutharika reiterated what had been said before that LCDs suffer the worst devastations of climate change despite that they are least contributors to emissions that contribute to what is being described by some quarters as a global tragedy.
“Climate change has already warmed the world by around 1° Celsius. This is bad enough. Another half a degree Celsius rise in temperature would cause more devastating consequences to life on Earth,” he said.
On food security and nutrition, Mutharika said a latest report had suggested that food insecurity may increase in the near future to acute crisis levels due to dwindling agriculture production in many vulnerable countries.
Speaking earlier when he officially closed the Climate Action Summit on Monday, UN Secretary- General, Antonio Gutteres, reiterated that “climate emergency is the fight of our lives and for our lives”.
Source: The Daily Times_September 26, 2019_By Alick Ponje, in New York, USA