The President of the Foundation, Mary Robinson, spoke at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) in Dublin on September 5, 2011, on the mission of the Foundation, which is to put the poor and forgotten at the heart of the climate change debate and to empower the marginalised to achieve sustainable and people-centred development.
Mrs Robinson said that climate justice lies at the nexus of climate change and human rights and that the “lens of climate justice brings what can be an abstract or abstruse phenomenon into sharp and immediate focus and illuminates the real human face of suffering and devastation wrought by climate change”.
She said the Foundation “articulates a vision for, inter alia, how climate justice can influence and shape negotiations on climate change and ultimately lead to equitable burden-sharing and greater equality through financial assistance and technology transfer”.
Speaking about the international negotiations, Mrs Robinson said there is still the need to secure a legally-binding agreement through the auspices of the UNFCCC and that this would “ensure that richer nations provide adequate financial and technical support to enable the poorest countries to adapt to climate change and embrace low-carbon development”.
Mrs Robinson went on to discuss a number of options on the legal form of a new agreement and said that the objective must be to “achieve an agreement that is above all effective, equitable and ambitious”.
The IIEA is a think tank on European and International affairs and annually hosts over 100 events. Previous speakers have included Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General and Jean Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank.
Related:
Download an audio podcast of this event
Mary Robinson at the IIEA – IIEA Blog, 12 Sep. 2011
Ireland has bridging role between EU and the Developing World, says Mrs Robinson – The Epoch Times, 07 Sep. 2011
Mary Robinson: Climate change a rights issue – RTE News, 06 September 2011
Climate change ‘threatens human rights’ – The Irish Times, 05 September 2011