Preparing for Paris Climate Change Conference

Mozambique’s Minister of Land, Environment and Rural Development, Celso Correia, said on Thursday that, at the forthcoming international conference on climate change to be held in Paris, he expected to hear what further contributions the countries that make the largest contributions to climate change are prepared to make.Speaking at the final forum in Maputo prior to the conference, bringing together government stall, academics and civil society representatives, Correia pointed out that Mozambique is one of the countries which “cause the least pollution”.

Yet although Mozambique made little contribution to greenhouse gases, it was highly exposed to the damaging effects of climate change.The expectation, not only of Mozambique, but of the African continent, Correia said, was to see in Paris what contribution would be made “by the countries which cause the most pollution”. On that would depend whether a firm agreement could be reached on climate change.Correia was sure that the storms and floods which had devastated parts of northern and central Mozambique at the start of this year were linked to climate change. Development plans for Mozambique, he stressed, “must take into account the impact of these disasters which have become cyclical. And we don’t know the scale of the ones that will come tomorrow”.“It is with this sense of responsibility that Mozambique will make its contribution”, said the Minister, “in the spirit in which the government has developed its action, with the involvement of all of civil society in this challenge we have ahead of us”.In the coming period, he added, the government hoped that an adaptation capacity would be created among rural communities to face the future impacts of climate change.The Paris Conference is the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (hence the term COP21) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 11th session of the Meeting of the parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.The ambitious objective of the conference is to achieve a universal, legally binding agreement on climate change to which all nations will sign up.