GUE/NGL’s representative at the COP22 Climate Change Conference in Marrakech has urged for greater commitments from signatory countries and more funding to be made available if last year’s Paris Accord is to succeed.

Travelling as part of the official European Parliament delegation to the conference, Spanish MEP and member at the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), Estefania Torres Martinez, said such commitments needed greater transparency and for more money to be made available to less developed countries as part of the Adaptation Fund.

Commenting from Marrakech, Torres Martinez said:

“These are strong commitments in enhancing our efforts to eradicate poverty, ensure food security, strengthening our resilience and reducing vulnerability.”

“Climate change poses a huge challenge to agriculture as well as other social and environmental challenges – displacing thousands of people and leading to obligatory migration to other parts of the world,” she added.

“Although I welcome the early political endorsement of the Paris Agreement by the required threshold as part of its ratification, there needs to be a more ambitious and quicker resolution in delivering – on time – the technical insertion of the Adaptation Fund into the Paris Agreement by the end of March 2017. This was stipulated by Article 15 of the new draft at CMA1 (Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement).”

“We need more effective and braver commitments from developed countries in engaging with renewables and for the EU to deliver more consistent objectives within its incoherent energy and climate policies,” Torres Martinez concluded.