ΦΙΛΟΙ της ΦΥΣΗΣ | NATUREFRIENDS INTERNATIONAL | Χάρτα για το Κλίμα, 2 NFI-Klimacharta_EN | Page 3

1. Preface
At the start of the 21st century, climate change has become the key challenge to
global politics and to sustainable development. If it cannot be contained, all efforts to
reduce poverty, to ensure food safety, to control migration, to protect nature and bio-
diversity, to create jobs and to safeguard peace will be futile. This is why climate
change cannot be regarded as a classical “environmental problem”, since – apart
from its far-reaching ecological consequences (cf. IPCC Assessment Report 2007) –
it is expected to impact in a major way on the economic and social development of
our globalised society (cf. Stern Review 2007, UNDP Human Development Report
2007-2008).
Climate changed is rightly referred to by the United Nations as this century’s greatest
challenge to humanity. An average increase in the Earth’s average surface tempera-
ture by 2 0 C above pre-industrial levels would impact disastrously on our planet’s eco-
systems and by implication on human development – a substantial sea-level rise,
droughts, crop failures, destruction of habitats, conflicts over land, mass migrations or
pandemics would be but a few of the consequences (cf. IPCC 2007). To prevent this
limit being exceeded in the long run, global emissions would have to be stabilised at
a maximum of 400ppm CO 2 -equivalent. Currently, the concentration of CO 2 alone
has reached 380 ppm, and it is increasing by 2 ppm annually. Any realistic prospect
of complying with the 2 0 C limit would imply that, having reached an expected maxi-
mum level between 2015 and 2020, global emissions would have to decline consis-
tently over the long term. (Cf. Meinshausen 2006)
The problem of global warming was institutionalised at the political level two decades
ago, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in
1988, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was ad-
opted in 1992. The fact that the signatory states are lagging far behind the recom-
mendations issued by these institutions, when it comes to concrete political action, is
evidenced by the continued steep increase in emissions – especially in the industrial-
ised and in the threshold countries.
International Friends of Nature (IFN) and its member organisations demand a swift
and effective political response to climate change. Such a response would have to
combine steps designed to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions with ad-
aptation measures to the, even now, inevitable consequences of climate change. In
this context the industrialised countries, that are mainly to blame for the increased
green-house gas concentrations, have a historic responsibility vis-à-vis the countries
of the South whose economic capacity to adapt to the consequences of climate
change are limited. As we see it, the key to an effective response to climate change
is a fundamental re-orientation of moral concepts on the part of policy-makers, the
business community and consumers, which needs to start in the industrialised coun-
tries. There is scientific evidence that our planet neither lacks the financial resources
nor the technological capacity for such a response. What we need, here and now, is
a politico-cultural revolution that will enable us to set the right course for the years to
come, thus preventing developments from coming to a head. At the core of this cul-
tural change must be the realisation that unconditional economic growth – the bed-
rock tenet of neoliberalism – is incompatible with the pressing need for emergency
measures against climate change.
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