INTERNATIONAL CALLS FOR ACTION

(High-Level Event on Climate Change, UN Headquarters, New York, 24 September 2007)

Ban Ki-moon
United Nations Secretary-General

“We need to set the stage for a comprehensive agreement that tackles climate change on all fronts – including adaptation, mitigation, deforestation, clean technologies and resource mobilization. And we have to do what we can to reach this agreement as soon as possible to ensure a global policy is in place by 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. Our goal must be nothing short of a real breakthrough in Bali.”

H.E. Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
President of Indonesia

“There is a great deal of public awareness of the significance of the Bali conferences. There is a public demand for concrete and bold accents. Thus we are looking forward to their principal outcome: a bold, global decision addressing climate change without significantly jeopardizing development efforts. That is what makes the Bali climate conference so crucial to the future of humankind.”

Mr. Rajendra Pachauri,
Chair of IPCC

“We, the human race, have substantially altered the earth’s atmosphere. In 2005, the concentration of carbon dioxide exceeded the natural range that has existed over 650,000 years. Eleven of the warmest years since instrumental records have been kept occurred during the last twelve years. Therefore climate change is accelerating.”

Mr. Marthinus van Schalkwyk
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
South Africa

“In Bali we must lay the foundations for an agreement that will enable future generations to look back and know that we understood the gravity of the problem at hand and that we turned talk into action and discussions into negotiations.”

Mr. Jose Socrates
Prime Minister of Portugal, on behalf of the European Union

“It must be clear that the United Nations climate change process is the appropriate forum for negotiating future global action. In this context, the Bali summit at the end of this year stands as a milestone, where we expect the international community to launch an ambitious roadmap for negotiations and a global comprehensive climate change agreement.”

Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Governor of California

“The consequences of global climate change are so pressing that it doesn’t matter who was responsible for the past; what matters is who is responsible for the future – and that means all of us. The rich nations and the poor nations have different responsibilities. But one responsibility we all have, and that is action…action, action, action! It is time to come together in a new international agreement that can embrace rich and poor nations alike.”