Fiji to chair next year’s big UN climate meeting

Fiji has been successful in its bid to be one of the co-chairs of next year’s United Nations climate change meeting, known as COP 23.

The Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, speaking at the COP 22 conference in progress in Morocco, says Fiji is honoured and humbled by the backing it has got to preside over the meeting, which will be held in Bonn, in Germany.

Fiji will be the first Pacific nation invited to fulfil such a role. Mr Bainimarama says Fiji will use the platform to continue to press for deeper cuts in carbon emissions to reduce global warming even further.

He says his country will also do everything it can to lobby the industrial countries which are responsible for these emissions to allocate adequate funding - in the form of grants - to enable resilience and adaptation to the terrifying new era.

Mr Bainimarama has also appealed again to the US President-Elect, Donald Trump, to show leadership and abandon his current position that man-made climate change is a hoax.

He says as the second biggest carbon emitter on earth the United States must take responsibility for contributing to the collective response to this crisis and show leadership at a critical time.

Source: Radio New Zealand