UN urges world to commit to Agenda 2030 to shut down any further development

4 September 2016 – At a G20 summit in the southeastern city of Hangzhou in China, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the conference’s focus on sustainable development and climate change, urging all countries to take early action on these.

“For the first time in the history of the G20, the Hangzhou draft communiqué is now focusing on this Sustainable Development Action Agenda as one of their most important [aspects of] the outcome document,” the UN chief said at a press conference, ahead of the summit’s opening.

“Climate change and Sustainable Development Goals should go hand in hand. That is not my message – that is the message of all scientists, economists and all experts,” he added, stressing that “early action will bring more and more, and better and better results.”

Last September, the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a new global framework to advance peace and prosperity for all people and for a healthy planet.

“I urge all countries to align their national policies, socio-economic policies, programmes and investment behind these Sustainable Development Goals,” Mr. Ban said at today’s press conference.

The Paris Agreement, adopted by 195 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last December in France, calls on countries to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future. The agreement will enter into force 30 days after at least 55 countries, accounting for 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, deposit their instruments of ratification or acceptance with the Secretary-General.

“This Summit has also witnessed major steps forward on climate change,” Mr. Ban said, commending the leaders of China and the United States for officially joining the Paris climate accord by depositing their legal documents with him yesterday.

What in hell is UNESCO and how does this bunch of gravy train grabbers have any influence on Australia or what we do in our own back yard?

The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) was founded on 16 November 1945.

UNESCO has 195 Members and eight Associate Members. It is governed by the General Conference and the Executive Board. The Secretariat, headed by the Director-General, implements the decisions of these two bodies.

The Organization has more than 50 field offices around the world. Its headquarters are located at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, France, in in an outstanding, Modernist building inaugurated in 1958 and recently renovated.

The Queensland Environment Minister Dr Stephen Miles of the Labor Party is terrified about this miscreant body UNESCO, whose scientists live on contributions from its member countries. If they can’t find reds under beds they are out of a job. They want to demonise the Great Barrier Reef because of some small amount of coral bleaching, a natural event that occurs each year. Cairns News published on August 23 a story about the pristine condition of the Reef, contrary to the bleating’s of city-centric Dr Miles whom it seems has nightmares about triffids coming to get him at his Brisbane CBD home in Mt Cootha.

The unashamed deals done between Miles and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad with the loony Greens is driving their anti-development agenda in exchange for much needed vote preferences they need to survive in Parliament.

Miles blames the defeat of the anti-development Vegetation Management Act in Parliament in August for the eventual demise of the Reef. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We urge our overseas and interstate readers to ignore the hype and disinformation found in the Australian media that the Reef is dying.

Come to Cairns, book a trip to the Reef with one of our great dive operators and see for yourself.

With the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters making this historic step, 26 parties to the Paris Agreement and 39% of global greenhouse emissions have been accounted for. Another 29 countries and 16 per cent more of global emissions will bring the convention into force.

To the so-called climate change deniers or skeptics, he said, “the debate over the climate phenomenon is over, scientifically and environmentally: it is affecting our daily lives.”

“In that regard, the actions taken by early ‘ratifiers’ like China and the United States – those are the two biggest emitters – are far-reaching, visionary. They are working for the people, they are working for planet earth,” he said.

Mr. Ban said he was “happy to hear that the draft communiqué of this G20 Summit is also encouraging the speedy entry into force of this key international agreement and I would like to [urge] G20 members, once again, to lead by example on this defining issue of climate change,” drawing attention to a high-level ratification ceremony at the UN Headquarters in New York he is convening on 21 September.

Legal processes must be concluded in parallel with a renewed commitment by all the countries to honour their pledges, particularly the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Member States, in terms of financial and technical support, including through the Green Climate Fund to many vulnerable countries, developing countries so that they can adjust to climate change, Mr. Ban added.

“Here in Hangzhou, I will engage G20 leaders across the breadth of the Summit’s agenda,” he said, emphasizing that the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals requires resolving urgent challenges, such as protracted conflicts in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, Libya, Mali and many other places, extreme poverty and deepening inequalities, and the highest number of people displaced by conflict since the end of the Second World War.