Participants Prepare for Bangkok Asia-Pacific Climate Week

26 August 2019 —Participants from all over the world are preparing to attend Asia-Pacific Climate Week 2019 (APCW 2019, 2-6 September) in Bangkok, where they will discuss ways to raise regional and global ambition to tackle climate change.

Raising ambition is crucial to grasp the many opportunities of climate action and to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, which are becoming increasingly costly for the region.

A report published by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) published last week sets out how recent disasters in the Asia-Pacific Region, especially those triggered by climate change, have deviated from their usual tracks and are growing in intensity, frequency and complexity.

Annual economic loss for Asia and the Pacific from such disasters is meanwhile USD 675 billion, or around 2.4 per cent of the region’s GDP.

The High-Level Segment of Asia-Pacific Climate Week will be attended by senior government and UN officials including Ambassador Peter Thomson, United Nations Special Envoy for the Ocean.

Among the civil society representatives speaking at the high-level plenary on 4 September will be Thai youth advocate Ms. Punyapha Visavakornvisisd, who runs the environmental awareness-raising organization YouthEN.

The results of Asia-Pacific Climate Week will feed into the outcome of the Climate Action Summit convened by the Secretary-General António Guterres on 23 September in New York and the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Chile in December, thereby boosting ambition and accelerating the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Discussions in Bangkok will focus on five of the nine Climate Action Summit’s tracks: energy and industry transition; infrastructure; cities and local action; resilience and adaptation; and nature-based solutions.

Asia-Pacific Climate Week Will be Fully Climate Neutral

The organizers of Asia-Pacific Climate Week 2019 are making the conference as sustainable as possible, and fully climate neutral.
The sustainability measures include offsetting all unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions from air travel to and from the meeting. Air travel is responsible for the lion’s share of emissions at international gatherings.

The offsetting will be done by purchasing certified emission reduction credits from the UN Mechanism - Clean Development Mechanism.

In addition, the UN’s Climate Neutral Now initiative will offer organizations, companies and individuals the possibility to compensate their own greenhouse gas emissions not related to Asia-Pacific Climate Week by purchasing UN-certified offsets.
More details about the sustainability of the conference can be found here.

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