Better leadership is needed globally to address a worsening climate crisis and help ease a growing sense of doom among citizens, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said in a forceful speech at Cop27.
“As leaders, we must lead,” he declared when delivering Ireland’s national statement to the UN climate summit in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, on Tuesday.
“Our citizens will become increasingly cynical, weary and hopeless if words are not urgently matched by deeds; if commitments do not generate new realities. We can already see and feel the world around us changing,” Mr Martin warned.
“Across the world, we are witnessing the reality of a changing climate – record temperatures, wildfires, floods, and droughts. What were once exceptional events are now occurring with increased frequency and ferocity.”
People in the poorest parts of our planet were being driven from regions that could no longer support and sustain them as “climate change is fuelling conflict, global instability, competition for resources and abject human misery”, the Taoiseach said.
“If this generation doesn’t step up urgently, future generations will not forgive us. As leaders, it is our responsibility to drive the transformation necessary.”
In Ireland, the Government had set legally-binding emission reduction targets of 51 per cent by 2030, and committed to climate neutrality by 2050, while fixed sectoral emissions ceilings had been set limiting emissions for each economic sector, he confirmed. “Achieving these targets will be challenging, so we have enacted a legal framework to guide and underpin our efforts.”
With the burden of climate change globally falling most heavily on those least responsible for “our predicament”, he said Ireland had published an international climate finance roadmap, “reaffirming our commitment to supporting the world’s most vulnerable people”. This extended to enhancing loss and damage support for countries already affected by climate disasters, while Ireland was “more than doubling our finance to at least €225m a year by 2025″.
But he believed the scale of change required would not be achieved without climate justice.
With temperatures in Ireland being so mild this autumn, trees were producing new growth before they have even dropped their leaves, he said.
The situation was urgent but not hopeless, Mr Martin said, as countries were bending the curve of emissions downwards: “Last year’s UN projections showed emissions continuing to rise beyond 2030. This year, however, analysis shows them no longer rising after that date. It is progress, but it is far from enough.”
When he spoke at Cop26 last year he said he did not believe that it was too late, that the transition would be too costly or that it was inevitable that people would be left behind. “I believe it even more so now,” he said at a plenary gathering of more than 100 global leaders.
“It is realistic for our legacy to be a sustainable planet; a world alive with an abundance of plant and animal life; with cleaner water and healthier air; with liveable cities and sustainable rural communities. We will do everything in our power to bring it about,” he said.
“This generation of leaders cannot say that we didn’t know. The science is clear. Every tonne of carbon warms the world. Every delay makes our task that bit bigger. Let us not waste a second more.”
Earlier Mr Martin announced an allocation by Ireland of €10 million in loss and damage funding under the “Global Shield” initiative to support poorer countries after experiencing climate-related disasters.
He co-hosted an event with German chancellor Olaf Scholz and the president of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo with colleagues from G7 countries and the Climate Vulnerable Forum representing 55 developing countries
Ross Fitzpatrick of Christian Aid Ireland welcomed Ireland’s recognition of the issue. “But finance for loss and damage cannot be adequately addressed by the Global Shield; a largely insurance-based mechanism. Loss and damage finance needs to be new and additional so that poor countries are not left to pick up the tab,” he said.
