JEDDAH: Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary General Abdul Latif Al-Zayani Saturday called on Arab states and Muslim oil producing countries to help curb the perils of climate change which also affects the Gulf and North African regions. The GCC secretary general made the call at the meeting Saturday of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which was also attended by invited OIC institutions. An accompanying statement to the online posted speech said the GCC official also calls for “discussions on sources of funding for ‘Green Fund' and the volume of allocations.” “Climate change poses an urgent challenge to our planet and human societies, including the OIC member states,” Al-Zayani said in a speech copy of which was also sent online to the Saudi Gazette. “While historically the share of the OIC countries in green house gas emissions and global warming has been negligible, these countries are unfortunately among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” he added. Citing a report by the UN International Panel on Climate Change, Al-Zayani said climate change has induced sea level to rise probably up to 59 centimeters or even more by the year 2100. “It will damage the agricultural sector by increasing salinity of soil and contaminating the fresh water resources,” he said. “This will seriously affect OIC countries in the Middle East and North Africa where economic activity and agriculture sector are concentrated on coastal areas.” The elevated sea level, he said, will also exacerbate flood impacts of the river and that the most vulnerable regions are the Nile delta in Egypt, the Ganges-Brahamaputra delta in Bangladesh, Maldives and Bahrain. He took note that many OIC countries are suffering from increasing water scarcity as their total renewable resources per capita are lower than the threshold level of 1,700 cubic meters a year. “In the Middle East and North Africa, countries like Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen receive less than 500 mm annual precipitation,” he said. “In these regions, water availability is predicted to halve by 2050 even without the effects of climate change.” He added that countries like Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Guinea, Morocco and Tunisia lie in semi-arid zone with rainfall below 500 mm and 1,500 mm per annum. “Climate change will further exacerbate water availability in these areas leading to a decline in agriculture,” the GCC secretary general said. He said the challenges to curb the effects of climate change “transcends national and regional boundaries. necessitating cooperation at all level — subregional, regional and global.” After citing the effects of climate change, Al-Zayani said the OIC “can provide a unique platform for collaboration among member states on climate-change related issues.” But he emphasized that the effort should complement and not duplicate the existing international and regional programs. “For this purpose we should identify specific areas of cooperation among member states and ways and means to benefit from existing mechanisms available in the framework of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and other relevant international instruments and arrangements,” he said. “While it is true that there is a great diversity among OIC member states in terms of their geological locations, climate characteristics, vulerabilities as well as economic and social indicators, there are several strong common elements which can form the basis of common approach during multilateral negotiations,” he said.
