KENYA/FILE: Kofi Annan urges compliance to Kyoto protocols for earths future

Outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan addressed the high level meeting on climate change at the start of its second week on Wednsday (November 15) in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Speaking after the president of the session Kenya's environment minister Professor Kivutha Kibwana and the Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki, Annan said the lack of control of green house gas emissions would lead to a global economic catastrophe worse than the recession at the end of the second world war. Annan, who arrived in Nairobi on Tuesday evening, said Africa would be most affected by this as it it lags behind as the least developed continent. It said that the number of people in Africa at risk from coastal flooding would rise to 70 million by 2080 from 1 million in 1990 and that 25-40 percent of habitats could be lost. Cereal crop yields could fall by 5 percent by 2080. "All of us want to see a day when everyone, not just the fortunate few can live in dignity and look to the future with hope, all of us want to create a world of harmony among human beings and between them and the natural environment on which life depends. That vision which has always faced wrong odds is now being place in deeper jeopardy by climate change." Annan said. The session which was attended by dozens of environment ministers from around the world, was also addressed by the Swiss president Moritz Leuenberger. Delegates at the 189-nation Nov. 6-17 talks have been trying to find ways to widen the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, capping emissions of greenhouse gases by 35 industrial nations until 2012, to include outsiders such as the United States, China and India. Top UN officials and government officials from around the world have been present at the opening of the Nairobi talks which aim at fixing a plan beyond 2012 for fighting warming that could spur more floods, droughts, spread disease and raise sea levels by almost a metre (three ft) by 2100.

ITN Source | November 15, 2006

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