Sunday, January 20, 2008
Climate change: European trade unions want to give workers a say on an ambitious post - Kyoto agreement
At the Bali conference (United Nations Conference on Climate Change), the European Trade Union Confederation will call for a firm commitment from all the developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gases emissions by at least 30% for 2020 and the adoption of specific measures that will ensure a "fair transition" for workers.
The European trade unions and their counterparts from other parts of the world will be present as observers at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, to be held in Bali from 3 to 14 December. The conference will be launching negotiations on a global and ambitious agreement for the period after 2012. In its roadmap for the Bali conference, the ETUC stresses the urgency of global action to combat climate change. "We have ten years to reverse the situation", declared ETUC Confederal Secretary Joël Decaillon. "Climate change is a threat to the means of subsistence of millions of people in the developing countries, where effective social protection systems are often also lacking. In Europe, as in other developed regions, labour intensive sectors are already being affected by the change in climate conditions. Two years on from Hurricane Katrina, the situation of thousands of people who have lost their jobs has still not been brought back to normal."
The European trade unions hope to see the negotiations on a new global post-Kyoto agreement get under way very quickly. The new agreement must be ambitious and fair and must include a new dimension on employment. The ETUC insists that the developed countries must set a binding target of at least a 30% reduction in their emissions by 2020 and that the emerging economies must undertake to control their emissions with the assistance of international cooperation.
See full Press Release.