French Ambassador warns of climate change

Muhammad Azam/DTNN

Manama

French Ambassador Bernard Regnauld-Fabre warned climate change is a very serious issue and it should not be taken lightly. He was speaking yesterday at the opening ceremony of ‘Bahrain Europe Environment Week’ at ARCWH Headquarters in Manama.

Director ARCWH Dr Mounir Bouchenaki, Chief Executive SCE Dr. Mohamed Mubarak Bin Daina, French Ambassador Bernard Regnauld-Fabre and Head of EU delegation to Saudi Arabia Ambassador Adam Kulach also addressed the gathering.   

He said climate has the capacity to upset the economic and social equilibrium of countries, stating example of the crisis caused by Hurricane Katrina in the US. 

“Beyond borders, climate change can stoke international conflicts over the control of vital and increasingly scarce resources — particularly water,” he said explaining, “The tensions among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the Nile and its tributaries is an example.” 

He said there was nothing abstract about the actual risks inherent to global warming. “In Egypt, an increase of 50 centimeters or almost 20 inches in the sea level would cause millions of people to flee the Nile Delta with security consequences for the entire region,” he said.  

A climate-disrupted planet would be an unstable one, he asserted.

He said the world is once again at crossroads. As the scientific basis behind climate change is already a certainty, the imperative for strong and collective action was becoming increasingly urgent, he added.

He said in case of global warming, all would be affected and the Arab region was no exception. Nobody could afford inaction on either the global, regional, or national scales, he stated. 

According to him, all sectors were concerned by global warming including coastal areas, food production, fresh water, human health, bio-diversity, housing, transport, tourism. 

He said the 2015 Paris Climate Conference is crucial as it must result in an international climate agreement that limits global warming to below 2°C. 

“The agreement should apply to all countries and the intended national determined contributions will represent the investment that each country feels able to make,” he stated in his speech. 

“Massive use of fossil fuels had accelerated conflicts ever since they had been central to our economies. Even today, control of natural gas supply routes threatens to destabilize the European continent like “gas war” between Russia and Ukraine in 2009,” he added. 

He said the only solution for global warming is going green. “We need a “global clean energy community” to free us from dependence on fossil fuels,” he concluded.