Legislators from 80 Countries Meet in Mexico City to Push for UN Climate Deal in 2015

Members of Parliament from over 80 countries met between June 6-8 at the second World Summit of Legislators, hosted by the Mexican Congress and organized by the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE). They came together in order to politically test a new model for an international climate change agreement that has national legislation at its heart.

“Now is the time for lawmakers and parliaments to intervene decisively in the international process,” they state in their final resolution to support UN efforts to develop a global greenhouse gas cutting deal in 2015.

PN member Saber Hossain Chowdhury MP from Bangladesh participated in the Second World Summit of Legislators in Mexico City. Thomson Reuters Foundation spoke to him:

Bangladeshi parliamentarian Saber Hossain Chowdhury is no stranger to U.N. climate change negotiations - he was at the big summits in Copenhagen in 2009 and in Cancún the year after. He believes it's important for elected politicians to attend because they're able to put a much-needed human face on the numbers and complicated jargon that dominate the process.

"The point you make is that I am someone who is actually representing the people, and you have no idea of the extent and amount of suffering they will go through even at a 2 degrees Celsius rise (in global temperatures)," he told Thomson Reuters Foundation.

His own constituency in the capital city Dhaka is vulnerable to flooding. But across Bangladesh, the full spectrum of climate change impacts is evident, from droughts and storms to rising seas and melting Himalayan glaciers, Chowdhury said. That is why the South Asian nation has been so proactive in pushing forward efforts to help poor communities adapt, and finding ways to pay for those efforts.

It helps that there is cross-party consensus on climate action in Bangladesh. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change and Environment, which Chowdhury chairs, gives advice to the substantial Bangladesh delegation before the U.N. talks, which strengthens its position, he said. […]

To read the full article on the website of Thomson Reuters Foundation, please click here.

Photo courtesy of Joshua Wiese.