UNITED Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and French President Francois Hollande at the Climate Change Conference on Tuesday called on the United States (U.S.) to honour the 2015 Paris Agreement. This call was directed to the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as to the importance of the U.S. remaining as a partner in the agreement, given its economic power and being the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter, which is a leading cause of climate change. This advice is communicating to Trump that while the U.S. is a superpower it is not the world; and whereas governments may come and go, the rest of the world will not countenance the behaviour of any country seeking to engage in international treaties and ending same based on internal politics.
The almost 200 governments, including the U.S., that are attending the Conference in Morocco (7th-18th November) believe climate change poses a clear and present danger to the world and man’s survival.
With Trump having campaigned on the belief that climate change is a hoax, his incoming administration has already set about looking at ways how the U.S. can extricate itself from the 2015 Paris Agreement which came into force on November 4. This treaty was in the making for the last 20 years and involved significant diplomacy, presentations of hard-core scientific evidence, compromises by powerful nations and commitmentsby participating nations to work together.
According to a Reuters report (15th November) a source on Trump’s transition team said he is seeking ways of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement within a year, by-passing a theoretical four-year wait. This is cause for concern in the face of scientific evidence of rising atmospheric temperatures and sea levels and dramatic melting of the Arctic seas. Any withdrawal would bring into question the credibility of the U.S. as a partner on the world stage and co-founder of the U.N. The issue is not only about the treaty, but that of credibility and image that will be besmirched in withdrawing from providing leadership for world peace and man’s collective good.
Climate change in Guyana has seen a record increase in temperature; storms are becoming more destructive; there are higher tides, resulting in water from the Atlantic Ocean coming over the seawalls and flooding the coastal roads, destroying livestock, vegetable gardens and farms. In the U.S., the southern states are beginning to experience snow, and in the north-east region, there are higher levels of snowfalls and more frequent snow storms.
For instance, Haiti, where there are frequent earthquakes, hurricanes and storms, with the destruction wrought by these to homes, infrastructure and farmlands are contributing to increasing poverty, communicable diseases, conflicts among the people to access scarce resources, and reduction in life expectancy. The famines in Africa, where once arable lands have been depleted, have led to wars. In North Korea, where droughts and floods have ravished the country, the BBC in 1999 reported that 3 million have died since it began in 1995. Unlike the U.S. that has safety measures in place to deal with disasters (natural and man-made), such disasters have not been without grave consequences as seen with Hurricane Matthew that last month passed through southern states such as Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina.
Successful relations are built on trust, be it between and among persons, institutions and countries. The role the U.S. has played on the world stage has earned it a reputation as a credible and reliable partner, not merely because of its economic prowess, but because it has been seen as embracing the values of institutions such as the UN. And over the years it has been seen as a country that is prepared to honour its words and commitments. Should the U.S. withdraw from the Agreement, it would diminish its standing in the global community. It will also embolden adversaries who would see such an act as weakness, and where it is felt that such a nation is weak, the bad guys will be more inclined to strike. And while diplomacy necessitates careful use of words by Ban Ki-moon, Hollande and others, they are not without merit, for lying beneath them are deep, justifiable concerns.