SCIAF meets with UK Government as Durban talks begin

Jill Wood hands over our climate campaign cards to Peter Betts (Photo: SCIAF)

SCIAF met with a leading negotiator for the UK Government last week ahead of the UN climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, at the end of this month

The meeting was used to hand-over 2,000 campaign postcards completed by fantastic SCIAF supporters calling on the UK Government to be a driving force in delivering a global deal at this year’s UN conference on climate change.

There’s still time to take action online: click here!

At the meeting in London SCIAF Policy Officer Jill Wood emphasised to Peter Betts, Director of International Climate Change at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the huge impact global warming is already having on millions of people across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and that the UK should do all it can to push for a fair, ambitious and legally binding global deal in Durban.

Specifically, SCIAF and its supporters are calling for the UK to ensure that it:

• provides its fair share of new finance to help people in developing countries to adapt to climate change

• ensures that a global deal includes legally binding agreements for wealthy industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels.

A report published last week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that the risk of extreme weather events such as droughts and flooding is likely to increase if the world continues to warm. This demonstrates the importance of the need for positive developments to stem from the talks in Durban.

SCIAF is already working on the ground in many developing countries to help poor communities to adapt to the impacts of climate change through emergency planning, promoting sustainable farming and helping people to diversify their sources of income. Several SCIAF partners from Zambia and Ethiopia will bring their first hand accounts of how climate change is affecting their countries when they travel to the UN negotiations which run from 29th November to 10th December.

SCIAF’s Jill Wood had this to say after the meeting in London:

“Thousands of people in Scotland have shown that they care passionately about justice and demand that wealthy industrialised nations curb their greenhouse gas emissions and pay financial compensation to developing countries who are being hit first and hardest by climate change. We have now passed these messages on to the UK Government and will be monitoring their actions in the coming weeks.

“SCIAF and our partners will also be at the negotiations in Durban because it is vital that the voices of the poorest members of the global community are heard at the highest level. Negotiators and politicians from the wealthy industrialised nations must be clear that they have an unequivocal moral obligation to take action to deliver a global climate change deal that is fair, ambitious and legally binding.

“With the IPCC’s latest report highlighting the increased risk of severe weather events if global warming continues it is vital that world leaders ensure significant progress is made in Durban.”

Watch out for very special coverage from the conference starting very soon! Thank you to all who have campaigned with us so far. You can still take action online to support the call for a global climate deal that supports the poor: Take action now

To get more detail on SCIAF's calls and policy asks from Durban click here

SCIAF

Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund

SCIAF meets with UK Government as Durban talks begin