By Milagros Pichardo on December 3, 2019
“Forests are shrinking, the air is poisoned and rivers polluted. Countless species of plants and animals perish have perished. Soils are impoverished. Old and new epidemics spread, while the population grows, multiplying the legions of the dispossessed.”
This phrase seems to have been taken from a 2019 scientific magazine, but no, it was said in 1995 by Fidel Castro, the statesman who predicted all the problems that climate change and man’s uncontrolled actions would bring to the world.
Today, after the damage is almost irreparable, the main objective of governments is to present proposals to try to keep the planet safe from so much generated pollution.
With this premise, the Annual Climate Summit (cop25) was inaugurated on Monday in Spain, and will continue there until December 13. The event, in which more than 25,000 people will participate, will seek consensus to address climate challenges, as well as ways to fully implement the Paris Agreement.
This meeting should lay the groundwork for a new phase of action on climate change, considering the participation of more than 50 heads of state.
Although the actions should have been taken a long time ago, when it was still possible to reverse the damages that afflict the planet, encounters like these make it possible to find new focus towards a better coexistence between man and nature.
An example of this was the letter sent by the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, to the participants in the summit, where he explains that, “there can be no climate justice without social justice.”
This is the same tone that Fidel Castro raised in 1977 when he explained that problems such as food, pollution and scarcity of natural resources would not even begin to be solved without a true climate of peace in the world.
On Monday, Chile received the presidency of the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change and now has in its hands, along with the rest of the countries of the world, the challenge of redoubling the fight against climate change. But, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, warned, “what is lacking is political will.”
Source: Granma, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau