NEW YORK: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah speaks at a United Nations Security Council meeting, addressing the impacts of climate-related disasters on international peace and security, on Friday at the United Nations in New York. - AFP

NEW YORK: Kuwait
said Friday that the world shares common but variable obligations to address
climate change, which required a political will and an international solidarity
to tackle impacts of this change. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister
Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah called for protecting earth from
further deterioration of climate change. Speaking in a UN Security Council's
session on addressing impacts of climate-related disasters on international
peace and security, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said studies showed deterioration
was faster than 'our steps to protect and preserve environment.' "We can
see negative impacts of climate change by our own eyes, from which millions of
people suffer ... like lack of food security, scarcity of water and other risks
on health of humans and other living creatures," he said.

Floods,
hurricanes, desertification, rising temperature, and rising levels of seas and
oceans were threatening Island Countries in the Pacific, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled
said. He added that international efforts contributed to the 2015 agreement in
Paris on climate change, but the world needed to do more in order to maintain
this accord in order to keep temperature of earth before two or 1.5 degrees
Celsius by 2020.

Sheikh Sabah
Al-Khaled, who voiced concern over World Meteorological Organization's reports
that years 2015-17 witnessed unprecedented high temperatures, expressed hope
world climate summit, due next September, would follow up outcome of UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) meeting held in Poland late
last year. The UNFCCC member countries agreed to boost transparency in
information sharing over plans regarding reduction of emissions, increasing
support for developing countries to help them overcome climate change's impacts
as well as implementing the Paris agreement, which would enter force in 2020.
The natural disasters, stemming from climate change, continued to grow in
intensity and accounted for 77 percent of the overall natural disasters in the
last two decades, the minister said, citing UN estimates.

"The
international community faces formidable challenges in responding to the
emergencies caused by these disasters, which claim more than three million
lives a year in addition to countless wounded and displaced people," he
said. "Africa, particularly the Lake Chad Basin region and the Sahel
region, took the brunt of the phenomenon of climate change which exacerbated the
economic and social problems in the continent and fueled armed conflicts and
struggle for the limited natural resources," he explained.

The State of
Kuwait shares the global concern over this phenomenon and joins the efforts of
the international community to curb this problem. "Since the launch of the
climate change talks, we have spared no effort to contribute to mitigating the
impacts of climate change on the local, regional or international scales. We
attached great importance to the negotiating process, which led to the historic
Paris Agreement. The State of Kuwait prioritized the initiatives to tape into
the resources of renewable energy, including the solar and wind energies, which
are expected to cover 15 percent of the country's needs by 2020," Sheikh
Sabah Al-Khaled revealed.

Similarly, the
oil sector has adopted strategies to reduce carbon dioxide gas emissions with a
view to attaining green economy and maximizing use of environment-friendly
energy, he went on. The State of Kuwait works for deeper cooperation and
collective action with other countries of the world on the government and
popular levels to ensure effective and timely response to emergencies and help
people hit by natural or man-made disasters. In doing so, Kuwait continues to
shoulder its international humanitarian responsibility for alleviating the
impacts of climate changes on social peace, food security, biodiversity,
sustainable development, he went on.

Sheikh Sabah
Al-Khaled highlighted the need to leverage modern technologies of environment
protection and change the human behavior in order to realize the 13th
Sustainable Development Goal that is 'take urgent action to combat climate
change and its impacts.' Concluding, the minister renewed Kuwait's resolve to
prioritize contributing to the international collective efforts in this regard,
through backing the UN agencies concerned with conflict prevention, crisis
management, peace building, climate change curbing, and realizing the SDGs.

Women's role

Meanwhile, Sheikh
Sabah Al-Khaled said that support for the role of women in the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA) region requires international collaboration. Speaking at a
UN Security Council session on the potential of national action plans for
advancing Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the MENA region in New York
late Thursday, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said that the session is vital and
underlines UNSC's - in addition to GCC, Arab League and IOC - keenness and
awareness of women's 'pivotal' role, especially in relation to resolution 1325.

The resolution
acknowledges the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women
and girls. It calls for the adoption of a gender perspective to consider the
special needs of women and girls during conflict, repatriation and
resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration, and post-conflict reconstruction.
Shedding light on the matter, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled branded as 'genuine' women
partnership in achieving stability, safety and advancement on political,
economic and social scales. In this vein, he pointed to Kuwait's commitment to
fulfill international requirements to provide women with the equal and decent
living standards enjoyed by men.

The meeting was
convened by members of the Security Council: Germany, Peru, and the United
Kingdom, and presided over by Heiko Mass, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs
of Germany. Kuwait has a non-permanent seat in the council and continues its
membership throughout 2019. Voicing support to efforts aiming at preventing
conflicts, the Kuwaiti top diplomat also welcomed endeavors to involve women in
resolving crises in the MENA region, especially the ones in Syria and Yemen.
The meeting also featured panelists from Iraq and Lebanon, who provided
insights on common barriers to implementing the WPS agenda in the Middle East,
and their efforts to overcome these challenges.

Sheikh Sabah
Al-Khaled's delegation to the meetings consisted of Assistant Minister for the
Affairs of the Foreign Minister's office Ambassador Sheikh Dr Ahmad Nasser
Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah, Kuwait's Permanent Representative at the UN headquarters
in New York Ambassador Mansour Al-Otaibi and a number of senior officials at
the Foreign Ministry. - KUNA