President Michel heads to New York for UN climate change summit |20 September 2014

President James Michel heads to New York this weekend to attend the United Nations climate change summit at the invitation of the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

The President will be accompanied at the summit by the Minister for Foreign Affairs Jean-Paul Adam, the Secretary General in the Office of the President, Lise Bastienne, the Ambassador to the US and Permanent Representative to the UN Marie-Louise Potter and the Ambassador for Climate Change and Small Island Developing States Issues Ronny Jumeau.

President Michel made strong statements on the issue of climate change recently in Samoa at the UN conference on small island developing states:

"It is time that we recognise climate change for what it is: a collective crime against humanity. Climate change will be the single largest reason for displacement of peoples in the next 50 years. Climate change is already robbing a generation of its livelihoods.  Climate change is robbing island nations of their right to exist. We must save our future together."

To note, Mr Michel met with the UN secretary general in the margins of the Samoa conference, and commended the UNSG for his efforts to put climate change on the international agenda. During the meeting Mr Ban Ki-moon said that climate change should be a number one priority for the world community, particularly the rising sea levels, and that he would be mobilising various governments to materialise their pledges for funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

According to the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon is hosting the climate summit to engage leaders and advance climate action and ambition.

The summit will serve as a public platform for leaders at the highest level – all UN member States, as well as finance, business, civil society and local leaders from public and private sectors – to catalyse ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience and mobilise political will for an ambitious global agreement by 2015 that limits the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature.

The UN has said the "climate summit will be about action and solutions that are focused on accelerating progress in areas that can significantly contribute to reducing emissions and strengthening resilience – such as agriculture, cities, energy, financing, forests, pollutants, resilience and transportation."

The summit is not part of the UNFCCC negotiating process. By promoting climate action, it aims to show that leaders across sectors and at all levels are taking action, thus expanding the reach of what is possible today, in 2015, at the UNFCCC COP21 meeting in Paris.