Turkey to ratify Paris climate deal “next month”

Published on : 09/22/2021 – 02:17

More than five years after signing the Paris agreement to fight climate change, Turkey will ratify it in October, its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Tuesday (September 21) from the podium of the General Assembly of the United Nations. United Nations (UN), New York.

“We intend to present the Paris climate agreement to Parliament for ratification next month (…) before the United Nations climate change conference” which will take place from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow (Scotland), said President Erdogan.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan recalled that his country had signed the Paris Agreement in April 2016 but that it had not ratified it so far “because of the injustices linked to the distribution of obligations and the sharing of the burden”, in terms of reducing polluting emissions.

Turkey considers that efforts should be differentiated between industrialized countries, a category to which it belongs.

“The world on a catastrophic path”, warns Guterres

The country was severely affected, like several others in the Mediterranean basin, last summer by forest fires and then sudden floods which claimed a hundred victims and caused significant damage to nature. Turkey is also hit by a persistent drought.

The Paris agreement, signed at COP21 in 2015, called for limiting global warming to less than 2 ° C above the pre-industrial level, and ideally 1.5 ° C.

But based on the current commitments of the member states of the agreement, “the world is on the catastrophic path of 2.7 ° C,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently warned, stressing that “if we are not changing course collectively, there is a great risk of failure of the COP26 “in Glasgow.

With AFP