Press Conference

Following is a transcript of the joint press conference by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, held in New York today, 22 September:

The international community must set stronger targets to curb the pollution causing global warming and act to address new industrial threats to a rapidly melting Arctic environment, Prince Albert II of Monaco said today at a Headquarters press conference, where he was joined by fellow members of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change.

The Government of Denmark had embarked on ground-breaking initiatives aimed at opening up debate to citizens of the world in the lead-up to and during the course of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said today at Headquarters.

Middle East Quartet Special Envoy Tony Blair, along with Norway’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, briefed correspondents today at Headquarters on the work of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, and the status of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

“We are well beyond the sweeping rhetoric of embedded positions and well into discussion of solutions,” János Pásztor, Director of the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, said at a Headquarters press conference today.

Reaching agreement at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference on a new pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be a “daunting” challenge, but not an impossible one, Al Gore told correspondents today during a press conference of the United Nations Leadership Forum on Climate Change.

During a press conference at United Nations Headquarters this morning, Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma declared that “capitalist lifestyles” were at the root of climate change problems, as he discussed key proposals to protect the environment and bring to justice those who contributed to pollution.

The wait-and-see attitude adopted by many countries with regard to action to address climate change was putting the process at risk and making it less and less easy to ensure a fair and just climate treaty offering something to the world, especially the poorest parts, René Grotenhuis, President of the CIDSE Network of Catholic Development Agencies, said today at Headquarters.

“The near poor are becoming the new poor” as a result of the global financial crisis, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations said today at Headquarters, as she announced the development of the United Nations Global Impact and Vulnerability Alert System, or “GIVAS”.

In advance of high-level meetings at United Nations Headquarters next week, Tibor Tóth, Executive Secretary for the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), noted favourable political momentum, saying he expected at least one more State to ratify the test-ban Treaty before long.