This beautiful planet is our only home, take serious action now to protect it, the Dalai Lama tells COP24 UN Climate Summit delegates

DHARAMSALA, Dec 6: We have to take serious action now to protect our environment and find constructive solutions to global warming because this beautiful planet is our only home His Holiness the Dalai Lama says in his written message to the COP24 UN Climate Summit delegates.

The written message of the Tibetan spiritual leader is being delivered, in hand, by Zamlha Tempa Gyaltsen, an environment research fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute, who has been representing Tibet at the annual global climate change conference for many years, reports Tibet.net, the official website of Central Tibetan Administration.

The Tibetan spiritual leader who maintains that climate change is a “problem which human beings created,” and has long advocated strong global action to limit global warming and to protect fragile environments, including the Himalayan glaciers and Tibetan plateau has yet again reminded the COP24 UN Climate Summit delegates to take serious action now to protect our environment and find constructive solutions to global warming.

“Climate change is not the concern of just one or two nations. It is an issue that affects all humanity, and every living being on this earth. This beautiful planet is our only home. If due to global warming or other environmental problems, the earth cannot sustain itself, there is no other planet to wish we can move. We have to take serious action now to protect our environment and find constructive solutions to global warming.”

The Dalai Lama has further called for cooperation among nations to solve climate change and protect our home which he describes as a common problem of the whole world.

“When we see photographs of earth from space, we see photographs of the earth from space, we see no boundaries between us, just this one blue planet. This is no longer a time to think only of ‘my nation’ or ‘our continent’ alone. There is a real need for a greater sense of global responsibility based on a sense of the oneness of humanity,” the Tibetan Nobel laureate’s message concluded.

Zamlha Tempa Gyaltsen, The Tibetan delegation at the summit has said that despite the massive global climatic role the Tibetan Plateau plays, it’s not given to due importance by the international community for various reasons.

“We have been asking the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to recognize the global ecological importance of the Tibetan Plateau and make it central to global climate discussions,” he said in the report.

In 1992, the UN organised a major event in Rio de Janeiro called the Earth Summit, in which the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted.

In this treaty, nations agreed to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere” to prevent dangerous interference from human activity on the climate system. Today, the treaty has 197 signatories. Every year since the treaty entered into force in 1994, a “conference of the parties” – a COP – is held to discuss how to move forward and, since there have been 23 COPs so far, this year’s will be the 24th, or “COP 24”.

COP24,  the two-week 24th conference of the parties of the United Nations Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC), started on Sunday in Katowice, Poland, which has historically been a coal-mining town in the south of Poland, with a special focus on carbon neutrality and gender equality.

The Tibetan delegation has been attending COP conferences since 2009 to change that perception by highlighting its ecological importance.