CAN and Beyond2015 Intervention during the OWG-11 on SDGs, 8 May, 2014

Dear Mr. Chair,

I am Lina Dabbagh and I am speaking on behalf of Climate Action Network and Beyond 2015.

We are united on the need to keep a dedicated climate change goal in a Post-2015 development framework. During the past days we have come here together in New York to try and frame a future for universal sustainable development that eradicates poverty. At this point, we have heard about poverty eradication, on how to promote sustainable agriculture, food security, health and economic growth, but as the OWG have heard from previous contributors in this process, all our efforts to achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication in the long term are nothing without addressing climate change.

CAN and Beyond 2015 welcome the “Working Document for OWG-11” , it is positive to see that climate change retains the level of visibility required and that several focus areas include targets contributing to climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience, including food and agriculture, cities, and energy. We cannot imagine a sustainable development framework guiding the international community for the coming 15 years that does not explicitly highlight climate change as a defining existential development issue and the threat multiplier of our time.  Without a strong focus on climate change, any future development framework will not be sustainable.

Addressing climate change is a prerequisite to ending poverty and its urgency and importance is best reflected by having a goal and integration throughout.  

Also having a dedicated goal on climate change in the new development agenda sends a positive political signal that climate change is a major development issue affecting poverty eradication and underpins the imperative for a positive level of ambition shown at the Conference of the Parties in Paris.

In the general assembly report “The future we want”, Countries acknowledged the centrality of climate change, to the development agenda reaffirming ‘that climate change is a cross-cutting and persistent crisis’ and ‘the scale and gravity of the negative impacts of climate change affect all countries and undermine the ability of all countries, in particular, developing countries, to achieve sustainable development […] and threaten the viability and survival of nations’.

Member States need to address this centrality by including a dedicated climate change goal, as well as mainstreaming climate action across all other relevant goals. This applies in particular to goals related to economic growth or industrialization. Inclusive and sustainable growth must ensure shared prosperity for all while remaining within the safe ecological limits of our planet.

CAN and Beyond 2015 further believe that the post‐2015 development process and the UNFCCC process are complementary to each other and should  capitalize on their potential mutual benefits in order to ensure the two processes strengthen each other.

Developing a coherent set of goals that reduce emissions and enable adaptation will support the scale of ambition needed to achieve the aims of both processes, namely preventing dangerous anthropogenic climate change, eradicating extreme poverty and achieving sustainable development.

Mr. Chair – not adequately addressing climate change will make it very hard for many civil society constituencies to indorse the post-2015 Sustainable Development Framework.

Thank you Mr. Chair