Vienna, – OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said on Tuesday that the oil producer group fully supports the Paris Agreement on climate change, a day after the Trump administration said it had filed paperwork to withdraw the U. S. from the pact.
“OPEC is fully engaged with the Paris Agreement,” Barkindo said at the launch of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) World Oil Outlook.
The U.S. move is part of a broader strategy by President Donald Trump to reduce red tape on American industry, but comes at a time scientists and many world governments urge rapid action to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
NAN reports that at a Climate Change Conference in Paris, on Dec. 12, 2015, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reached a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future.
The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and – for the first time – brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so.
The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Additionally, the agreement aims to increase the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.
To reach these ambitious goals, appropriate mobilisation and provision of financial resources, a new technology framework and enhanced capacity-building is to be put in place, thus supporting action by developing countries and the most vulnerable countries, in line with their own national objectives.
The Agreement also provides for an enhanced transparency framework for action and support.
