First Minister’s message to UN climate talks

Reacting to news that Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, and former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, have sent a joint message to the UN climate talks in South Africa calling for climate justice to be reflected in the outcome of the talks, Stan Blackley, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said:

“We welcome the call to the UN climate talks from Alex Salmond and Mary Robinson asking delegates at to keep climate justice high on their agenda. This call comes in the last three days of what are failing talks and when unified, multilateral effort is desperately required to stop the rich countries at these talks from tearing up existing climate agreements and commitments and locking in ten years of inaction that will set the world on a course for climate catastrophe.

“The world’s developed countries are trying to kill the Kyoto Protocol. They want to turn back the clock to 1997 and shift responsibility for the climate crisis they have created onto the developing countries that are already bearing the brunt of climate change. Anything less than strong legally-binding emissions reductions for developed countries under a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol from these talks will see them branded as yet another failure by the international community to tackle climate change before it’s too late.”

ENDS

For media enquiries, please contact: Per Fischer, Press Office, Friends of the Earth Scotland
t: 0131 243 2719

See the Scottish Government press release:
www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2011/12/08150807