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The Human Face of Climate Change
The recently formed Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) held in Geneva its first Annual conference on the 24 and 25 June 2008. Two hundred and seventy five eminent leaders from different horizons: public and private sectors, humanitarian, development and academia fields, gathered to define a new vision on the most crucial problems of today. Facing climate changes, establishing climate justice and regulations for polluters, business opportunities of adaptation, practical solutions for empowering vulnerable people and communities, dealing with regional water stress: these were only a few of the topics which involved participants into lively, smart and intense debates.
Mr. Kofi Annan, the former UN General Secretary and presently president of the GHF, and Mr. Walter Fust, till recently Director-General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and presently, Director General of GHF, were constantly present at the conference, mixing with the participants, stimulating the debates, but not imposing conclusions. Eminent scientists, Nobel Prize laureates, political or economy leaders, namely: Rajendra K. Pachauri, Mary Robinson, Catherine Bertini, Ivan Pictet, took the floor to give their views on the ways which must be undertaken in our situation of emergency on climate changes and global warming.
The importance of Rainwater Harvesting, as a practical tool for adaptation to climate changes, and also as a way of solving water crisis on local and regional levels was underlined by many of the speakers. Mr. Philippe Roch spoke about the "part of the water cycle which is practically not used as a water resource". Mr. Nevil Isdell, Chairman of the Coca Cola Company, stressed on its involvement in different rainwater actions intra and extra muros of the plants. Mme Monta, the IRHA Executive Director, appealed to the decision makers to work at the introduction of Rainwater Harvesting as part of the climate change adaptation policy, either for direct use or for ground water recharge.
"We have delayed for twenty years. We should have started this work much earlier", repeated various speakers at the conference. With the exchanges between the participants as starting points of future collaboration, and with concrete proposals as outputs of the conference, the general feeling was, if not optimistic, at least reassured. If all the participants work hard, next year's GHF meeting will announce a reduction in the lateness of the humanity for handling effectively the phenomenon of climate change.
Vessela Monta