QUNO speaks at IPCC climate talks
‘The ethical voice in the room.’ QUNO’s contribution, according to independent reporting.
Quakers were an integral part of a global scientists’ report last month, which delivered a ‘final warning’ on the climate crisis.
During the marathon final session for the Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) worked hard to ensure that the report set out the risks clearly and was not watered down.
Changes suggested by Lindsey Fielder Cook, QUNO’s representative for climate change, ensured solutions based on climate justice, rights-based approaches, and sufficient climate finance were emphasised. Along with her colleague Alana Carlson, she made twenty-four interventions, focusing on urgent, transformative and rights-based climate policies.
The risks and challenges of carbon capture and large-scale carbon dioxide removal were also recorded in the summary, which collates the full findings of the sixth assessment report.
Quakers were mentioned twenty-one times in the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, the independent reporting service on UN climate talks, which called QUNO ‘the ethical voice in the room’.
‘It is hard to emphasise how unusual is our Quaker access in the IPCC-approval space,’ said Lindsey Fielder Cook, who made the interventions on behalf of Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC).
Saying that people around the world need hope, QUNO was unsuccessful in urging countries in the room to retain the IPCC draft finding that: ‘urgent, feasible and equitable near-term options are available at scale to address climate change and improve human wellbeing’.
QUNO is one of a number of observers at the IPCC which seeks to uphold transparency and scientific integrity.
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