PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT OF POLAND

 

Addressing correspondents at a press conference at the United Nations Headquarters today in the margins of the high-level event on climate change, the President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, urged the Organization to play a key role in strengthening the world’s commitment to address the climate change issues.

President Kaczynski said that efforts of the European Union alone would not bring results, stressing that the United Nations was the appropriate place and should be put to good use.  Solutions to climate change issues were possible, but solidarity is essential.

“We are faced with real issues that we need to resolve,” he said.  Those issues included emissions reduction, developing technology and keeping economic interests at the forefront.

He said that the world failed to notice climate change for a long time, and that focusing on the issues was happening now.  He was pleased that climate change issues were now being discussed at the United Nations.

Poland, a country of 40 million people, has made important strides, including a successful forestation programme and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by one-third since 1989, he also noted.  Poland’s gross domestic product (GDP) had also grown by 60 per cent during the same period.

“ Poland is now going through a period of much faster development,” President Kaczynski said, adding, “We have accepted tough commitments.”

Part of the solutions to climate change problems rested on the use of methods connected to globalization, he said, suggesting an exchange of technology:  one country could deliver technology and another could handle emission quotas.  In today’s world, commercialization was not addressed, not only would climate change problems remain unsolved, but the problems would increase in the future.

“It is not that it is a matter of the future, it is today,” he said, adding that, if everything was based on maximizing profit, it would take a long time for results to emerge that would address climate change issues.

Hopefully, a renewed pledge to curb climate change would be launched at the upcoming fourteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC and fourth session of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, to be held in Poland in 2008, he said.  The Kyoto Protocol was a temporary instrument, still not ratified by many countries.  Realizing the Kyoto Protocol’s every aim would mean replacing it with a protocol that would go much further in terms of commitment.

“I’m convinced the Kyoto Protocol will be replaced by something more perfect,” but the world would have to change its mentality and ideology about the issues before that happens, he said.

The President was accompanied at the press conference by Poland’s Minister of the Environment, Jan Szyszko.  This afternoon, a representative of Poland is scheduled to address the high-level event on mitigation:  “Reducing emissions and stabilizing the climate —- safeguarding our common future”.

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For information media • not an official record