Speech deliveredbyAmbassador Dr. Hasan Ulusoy, Director General ForMultilateralAffairs of theMinistry of ForeignAffairs of theRepublic of Turkey
At the 2015 United Nations ClimateChange Conference, COP 21
Paris, 6 December 2015
2015 is an exceptionally important year regarding sustainable development, environmental conservation and combatting climate change and its adverse effects.
The international community is in the process of determining how to collectively address climate change beyond 2020.
No country is immune from the adverse even devastating effects of climate change
Considering the global scale of the issue and that no country’s efforts will solely be sufficient to cope with this challenge, we are continuing to support the international efforts, in addition to the steps taken in Turkey.
G20 Presidency of Turkey paid special attention to the landscape of climate funds currently available. That's also why we developed a toolkit to enhance access to adaptation finance by low income developing countries, by small island countries and by African countries.
Ankara hosted the 12th Conference of Parties to the UN Conference on Combatting Desertification between 12 and 23 October 2015.
Turkey is determined to mobilize those synergies during its chairmanship of the UNCCD. In this regard Turkey will provide technical assistance and implement pilot projects with the countries who are most affected by drought and land degradation.
Climatic degradation and humanitarian crises, these two are the pressing realities of our era which are linked to each other in several instances. To tackle them in a more efficient manner, development-focused humanitarian assistance is emerging as a viable and cost-effective system.
The climate change triggering natural disasters such as extreme rain, tornados or tsunamis lead mostly to humanitarian crises. In such cases if the country hit lacks sufficient infrastructures and institutional capacity, humanitarian relief aids cannot be sufficient to help the country alone.
The same can be said in recurrent crises related with climatic degradation. For example climatic degradation such as desertification or deforestation, once coupled with the lack of sufficient infrastructures and institutional capacity, triggers periodical circles of either drought or inundation which all result in humanitarian crises including displacement and refugee influxes.
- In both cases humanitarian aids need to be complementedwith development tools to increase resilience.
In order to break such vicious circles we need to intervene with different tools. First, we intervene with humanitarian aids for humanitarian relief and continue with development projects to support resilience, along with environmental tools to help fighting the desertification or desertification.
This is the main philosophy behind our policy in such cases, which is marked with the combined use of humanitarian and development financing along with environmental tools in a concerted way.
We as the host country of the WHS attach special importance to these issues and based on what we have developed on the field to assist the countries in need we encouragethe increased application of the combined use of humanitarian and development tools and financing in such cases .
We support that such issues will be duly reflected at the WHS.
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