Campaigners welcome Scotland Environment Secretary’s attendance at UN Climate Summit

  • 10 Nov 2016
  • General News, International

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland welcomes the announcement made today in the Scottish Parliament that Roseanna Cunningham, Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform will be attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP22) in Marrakech.

Tom Ballantine, Chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland said:

“We welcome Ms Cunningham’s participation in COP22. Scotland has a strong story to tell on climate change especially with regards to renewables and climate legislation. But our story will only remain credible if we keep up our momentum. We hope that Ms Cunningham’s visit will strengthen the government’s resolve to act, with a strong Climate Change Plan and ambitious targets in a new Climate Bill for Scotland”.

“It is essential that world leaders harness the political will and momentum generated by the Paris Agreement. Promises have to be turned into concrete plans in Marrakech that deliver the action needed to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees.

“To understand the level of action required we can look at a recent report by the UN Environment Programme. It said that, even with the pledges in the Paris Agreement, the world is still heading for a temperature rise of between 2.9 and 3.4 degrees this century.

“The devastating effects of climate change are increasingly being felt around the world and, as the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon highlighted in a speech she recently gave in Reykjavik, it is people in the poorest countries, those least able to cope and that have done the least to cause it, being hardest hit.”