At the closing of the ADP session of COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, Ambassador Marlene Moses, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a group of 44 low-lying and coastal countries that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, released the following statement:

“The Warsaw climate talks opened against the backdrop of the horrific tragedy caused by Super-Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, one the strongest storms in history, and only the latest in a series of extreme weather events fueled by climate change.
“Our Member States of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia were hit by the storm as it gathered strength on its path to the Philippines, only narrowly escaping its full wrath.“The science, the storms, and the suffering are all screaming at us to take urgent action, and though it may be too late for those devastated communities in the Philippines and so many other vulnerable communities already suffering climate impacts, we can avert more needless tragedies if we act now, but it has to be well before 2020.“The ADP Workstream 2 on short-term mitigation launched in Warsaw is the best opportunity we have to implement policies and technologies that we know rapidly lower emissions.“We call on the world’s leading experts in these areas to join us in this effort, because we’ll need all the help we can get to bring emissions down to the level required in the vanishingly small time we have left to do it.”

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