Student parliament for climate justice at Kottayam
Aimed at making their voices heard at COP30 , the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Brazil in November, a Student Parliament for Climate Justice will be held at CMS College, Kottayam, on June 6.
The event will bring together student representatives from various schools run by the Church of South India (CSI) and they will share stories of climate crisis from 17 climate-vulnerable regions across the globe. The event will feature stories from Sundarbans, Tuvalu, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Dominica, the Amazon rainforest, California, Canada, Greece, Mozambique, Iraq, Mali, Kenya, Greenland, Alaska, Australia, and Kerala. Student ambassadors from the U.S., India and Bhutan too will speak.
The parliament will culminate with the adoption of a resolution demanding a carbon-free global economy and decisive action.
The event is jointly organised by the CSI Madhya Kerala Diocese's Department of Environmental Concerns and CMS College, Kottayam.
Following the parliamentary session, a public meeting will be held. Bishop Malayil Sabu Koshy Cherian, Bishop of the CSI Madhya Kerala Diocese, will preside. Cooperation Minister V.N. Vasavan will inaugurate it. Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, jurist K.T. Thomas and others will speak.
Anju Sosan George, Principal of CMS College, will serve as official host of the event.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
12 hours ago
- Time of India
World Bank and IMF climate snub 'worrying', says COP29 presidency
The hosts of the most recent UN climate talks are worried international lenders are retreating from their commitments to help boost funding for developing countries' response to global warming. Major development banks have agreed to boost climate spending and are seen as crucial in the effort to dramatically increase finance to help poorer countries build resilience to impacts and invest in renewable energy. But anxiety has grown as the Trump administration has slashed foreign aid and discouraged US-based development lenders such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from focussing on climate finance. Developing nations, excluding China, will need an estimated $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in financial assistance to transition to renewable energy and climate-proof their economies from increasing weather extremes. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Buy Brass Laxmi Ji Idol For Wealth, Peace & Happiness Luxeartisanship Shop Now Undo Nowhere near this amount has been committed. At last year's UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, rich nations agreed to increase climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035, an amount decried as woefully inadequate. Azerbaijan and Brazil, which is hosting this year's COP30 conference, have launched an initiative to reduce the shortfall, with the expectation of "significant" contributions from international lenders. But so far only two -- the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank -- have responded to a call to engage the initiative with ideas, said COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev. "We call on their shareholders to urgently help us to address these concerns," he told climate negotiators at a high-level summit in the German city of Bonn this week. "We fear that a complex and volatile global environment is distracting" many of those expected to play a big role in bridging the climate finance gap , he added. - A 'worrisome trend' - His team travelled to Washington in April for the IMF and World Bank's spring meetings hoping to find the same enthusiasm for climate lending they had encountered a year earlier. But instead they found institutions "very much reluctant now to talk about climate at all", said Azerbaijan's top climate negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev. This was a "worrisome trend", he said, given expectations these lenders would extend the finance needed in the absence of other sources. "They're very much needed," he said. The World Bank is directing 45 percent of its total lending to climate, as part of an action plan in place until June 2026, with the public portion of that spilt 50/50 between emissions reductions and building resilience. The United States, the World Bank's biggest shareholder, has pushed in a different direction. On the sidelines of the April spring meetings, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the bank to focus on "dependable technologies" rather than "distortionary climate finance targets." This could mean investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production, he said. Under the Paris Agreement, wealthy developed countries -- those most responsible for global warming to date -- are obliged to pay climate finance to poorer nations. Other countries, most notably China, make voluntary contributions. - Money matters - Finance is a source of long-running tensions at UN climate negotiations. Donors have consistently failed to deliver on past finance pledges, and have committed well below what experts agree developing nations need to cope with the climate crisis. The issue flared up again this week in Bonn, with nations at odds over whether to debate financial commitments from rich countries during the formal meetings. European nations have also pared back their foreign aid spending in recent months, raising fears that budgets for climate finance could also face a haircut. At COP29, multilateral development banks (MDBs) led by the World Bank Group estimated they could provide $120 billion annually in climate financing to low and middle income countries, and mobilise another $65 billion from the private sector by 2030. Their estimate for high income countries was $50 billion, with another $65 billion mobilised from the private sector. Rob Moore, of policy think tank E3G, said these lenders are the largest providers of international public finance to developing countries. "Whilst they are facing difficult political headwinds in some quarters, they would be doing both themselves and their clients a disservice by disengaging on climate change," he said. The World Bank in particular has done "a huge amount of work" to align its lending with global climate goals. "If they choose to step back this would be at their own detriment, and other banks like the regionally based MDBs would likely play a bigger role in shaping the economy of the future," he said. The World Bank declined to comment on the record.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
Catholics call for environmental action at Rio de Janeiro's iconic Christ the Redeemer statue
Catholics call for environmental action at Rio de Janeiro's iconic Christ the Redeemer statue (Picture credit: AP) RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilian Catholic worshippers laid down an eco-friendly carpet in front of the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday and called for the protection of the environment ahead of UN climate talks in the Amazon. Tapestries are a fixture of the Corpus Christi religious feast when Catholics celebrate what they believe is the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This year, the colourful carpet was made from approximately 460 kilos (1,014 pounds) of recycled plastic caps . Over the past few years the Christ the Redeemer sanctuary has increasingly used the attention the iconic statue generates to spotlight environmental concerns. "These caps could be polluting the environment. Today they're here as a carpet," said Marcos Martins, environmental manager and educator at the sanctuary. "It's the circular economy: we take the material, we're reusing it here and then we're going to reuse it again with an exhibition." by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Perdagangkan CFD Emas dengan Broker Tepercaya IC Markets Mendaftar Undo Just after daybreak and before the first flock of tourists arrived on Thursday, Cardinal Orani Joao Tempesta led celebrations at the site overlooking Guanabara Bay and Rio's famed Sugarloaf mountain. The caps are "a good reminder of our co-responsibility with ecology, of our concern for the environment, which are very characteristic of Christ the Redeemer," Rio's archbishop told journalists. Thursday's celebration also paid homage to the late Pope Francis and his Laudato Si', a landmark environmental encyclical in which he cast care for the environment in stark moral terms. In the papal letter, Francis called for a bold cultural revolution to correct what he said was a "structurally perverse" economic system in which the rich exploited the poor, turning Earth into a pile of "filth" in the process. "The COP30 is coming up and we've just had the U.N. Ocean Conference. Nothing makes more sense than Christ being a great spokesperson for this issue," said Carlos Lins, the sanctuary's marketing director. Earlier this month, the sanctuary held workshops, discussion groups and actions focusing on environmental preservation. The statue, perched on the Corcovado mountain, is itself located in the Tijuca National Park . Brazil has been hit by a series of environmental disasters in recent years, including severe droughts in the Amazon, wildfires in the Pantanal and flooding in the south. This week, heavy rains killed at least two people in the southern region of Rio Grande do Sul, just over a year after it was hit by the worst flooding on record. Scientists say extreme weather is happening more frequently due to human-caused climate change.
New Indian Express
3 days ago
- New Indian Express
World Bank and IMF climate snub 'worrying': COP29 presidency
BONNN: The hosts of the most recent UN climate talks are worried international lenders are retreating from their commitments to help boost funding for developing countries' response to global warming. This anxiety has grown as the Trump administration has slashed foreign aid and discouraged US-based development lenders like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from focussing on climate finance. Developing nations, excluding China, will need an estimated $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in financial assistance to transition to renewable energy and climate-proof their economies from increasing weather extremes. But nowhere near this amount has been committed. At last year's UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, rich nations agreed to increase climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035, an amount decried as woefully inadequate. Azerbaijan and Brazil, which is hosting this year's COP30 conference, have launched an initiative to plug the shortfall that includes expectations of "significant" contributions from international lenders. But so far only two -- the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank -- have responded to a call to engage the initiative with ideas, said COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev. "We call on their shareholders to urgently help us to address these concerns," he told climate negotiators at a high-level summit in the German city of Bonn this week. "We fear that a complex and volatile global environment is distracting" many of those expected to play a big role in bridging the climate finance gap, he added. His team travelled to Washington in April for the IMF and World Bank's spring meetings hoping to find the same enthusiasm for climate lending they had encountered a year earlier. But instead they found institutions "very much reluctant now to talk about climate at all", said Azerbaijan's top climate negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev. This was a "worrisome trend", he said, given expectations these lenders would extend the finance needed in the absence of other sources. "They're very much needed," he said. The United States, the World Bank's biggest shareholder, has sent a different message. On the sidelines of the April spring meetings, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the bank to focus on "dependable technologies" rather than "distortionary climate finance targets." This could mean investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production, he said.
