Under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, a series of summits are uniting leaders to work toward an international negotiated climate change deal, which will be clinched in December 2009 in Copenhagen.
At the summit last August in Ghana, Nigerian Ewah Eleri said the onus lies on rich countries, which must commit funds to “compensate poor countries for the damage caused by their greenhouse gas emissions,” according to Ekklesia news service. Eleri and other African leaders asked for billions in compensation. “Palliatives will no longer do,” Eleri said.
Alison Doig of the U.K.-based organization Christian Aid, also in attendance at the Ghana summit, told Sojourners that industrialized countries should support African civil groups. “In practical terms this will mean first and foremost the agreement of strong and binding emissions cuts from all industrialized countries to put them on the path to rapid reductions in carbon emissions,” she said. Christian Aid’s research predicts that 182 million sub-Saharan Africans could die of diseases attributable to climate change by the end of the century.
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