Delegates call for unified efforts on climate change

Multilateralism must be defended to cope with climate change, officials and experts said at the sixth annual conference of the Taihu World Cultural Forum.

"Today, confrontations and selfish behaviors are much too frequent, and the vagrant attacks on multilateralism are dangerous for world stability," Laurent Fabius, president of France's Constitutional Council, said on Tuesday during the forum in Bengbu, Anhui province.

He was speaking via video link to a subforum themed "Cooperation to Cope with Climate Change and Seek Global Construction of Ecological Civilization."

"The answer must be a defense of the international dialogue of multinational organizations, respect for international law, cooperation and tolerance," said Fabius, who announced the adoption of the Paris Agreement on Dec 12, 2015.

"The Paris Agreement raised immense attention, but today, six years later, the world climate situation is critical. This summer has been marked by a record and terrible combination of heat and flooding throughout the world."

Those extreme weather events are essentially due to carbon emissions linked with human activities, especially the use of coal, oil and gas, he added.

Fabius cited numerous scientific reports saying that if the present trend continues, the global temperature will reach 3 C above preindustrial levels, far higher than the agreed maximum of 2 C.

He praised China for keeping its promises to the world.

"Recently, President Xi Jinping has announced that China will stop financing overseas coal projects. That is important and positive," he said.

Xie Zhenhua, China's special envoy for climate change affairs, said that by last year, the nation's GDP had doubled from that in 2005, while per capita carbon emissions had fallen by 48.4 percent.

Also speaking by video link, Xie emphasized that the positive changes had been achieved as the country worked to eliminate absolute poverty.

"Climate action is an inseparable part of the ecological civilization, which is at the core of China's development strategies, said Xie, adding that nature breeds humanity's finest civilizations.

Speaking on Tuesday to the forum's general assembly, Yang Jiemian, chairman of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies' Council of Academic Affairs, said, "In the long years of human history, the insufficiency of material goods gave birth to various cultures reflecting the struggle between dreams of fair distribution and a fight for physical wealth.

"Obviously, to realize the goal of both increasing material wealth and enhancing the spirit of fair distribution, humanity needs to build a new global culture that can promote greater material production and enhance greater fairness in distribution."