The President of the Kyrgyz Republic spoke at the General Debate of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly in New York (USA).
Sadyr Japarov reminded his colleagues and partners that ambitious statements and promises were made at previous summits and conferences on climate change. However, the level of annual funding under the Paris Agreement announced in 2015 is now insufficient.
«We believe it is necessary to revise it towards a significant increase in the level of funding that meets the real needs of countries vulnerable to climate change,» Sadyr Japarov stressed.
He added that another problem is that most of the climate finance is provided to low- and middle-income countries in the form of loans. There is also no difference in the procedures for allocating loans for projects worth $1 million or $1 billion. «This undermines the essence and objectives of the climate agreements,» the President said.
«I have already asked our partners to exchange foreign debt for environmental projects. Unfortunately, we have not yet received a response from most developed countries. Only the German government has written off 15 million euros of debt. We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the German side. We urge donors to reconsider their approaches in favor of providing climate finance to countries in need on a grant basis,» he said.
Sadyr Japarov also said that Kyrgyzstan supports the Bridgetown Initiative proposed at the last climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, as well as the calls voiced at the summit on global finance in Paris in June this year to mobilize the necessary funding and structural reform of the international financial architecture.
Unless we start doing this now, injustice in the world will continue to grow. Rich countries will continue to get richer and poor countries will get poorer.
Sadyr Japarov
He recalled that mountain regions are particularly vulnerable to global climate change. In Kyrgyzstan, mountains cover about 94 percent of the country’s territory. Climate change in Central Asia has led to intense glacier melting, the president said.
«If earlier it was predicted that by 2050 the area of glaciers in Kyrgyzstan would be reduced by half, and could disappear by 2100, now there are reasons to believe that this will happen much faster. This leads to aggravation of problems throughout the region: lack of water for drinking and agriculture, soil degradation, and a threat to food security,» Sadyr Japarov said.
According to the latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the negative impact of changes in the cryosphere is particularly acute for residents of high mountain regions, whose ecosystems have reached the extreme limits of adaptation.
«In order to effectively preserve mountain ecosystems and glaciers on the basis of the resolutions on sustainable mountain development adopted earlier by the UN General Assembly, our country, together with the Global Mountain Partnership and other representatives of the UN system, has developed the Global Action Plan. We are grateful to all partners: countries and international structures for joint work,» Sadyr Japarov said.
Kyrgyzstan advocates the creation of a broad coalition of mountain countries.
«We believe that adaptation to climate change and transition to a green economy will be among the main priorities of this future coalition. As the final stage of the Mountain Five-Year Plan, we plan to hold the second Global Mountain Summit Bishkek+25 in 2027 in Kyrgyzstan, 25 years after the first summit,» Sadyr Japarov added.
He thanked partners from the Group of Friends of Mountain Countries, the Global Mountain Partnership and the entire UN system for supporting Kyrgyzstan’s initiatives and invited to attend the Mountain Summit.
