Filipino activists call for urgency on climate change at Lima conference
Third typhoon to hit the Philippines during annual ministerial-level negotiations towards a new global pact prompts activists to speak out
While loved ones braced for the full impact of Typhoon Hagupit back home, Filipino activists in Lima urged climate negotiators on Saturday to act with more urgency in drafting a global plan to limit such potentially life-threatening events.
"To us in the Philippines, we are not any more debating on whether or not the impacts of climate change are here, we have experienced it," Voltaire Alferez, of the Aksyon Klima Pilipinas NGO grouping, said on the sidelines of the talks.
"Year after year we are bombarded … from one typhoon to another," he said as his wife and son of one year left their Manila home for the relative safety of higher ground.
This is the third typhoon in a row to hit the Philippines during the annual, ministerial-level climate negotiations towards a new, global pact to limit climate harm by curbing earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
Last year, Typhoon Haiyan hit while talks were under way in Warsaw, killing 7,350 people, and Typhoon Bopha claimed 600 lives during negotiations in Doha in 2012.
It is never possible to attribute any individual weather event to climate change, but the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation has said extreme storms such as Haiyan were "consistent" with human-induced climate change.