Dr Payet calls on US to act quickly on climate change

From Seychelles Nation - 06.04.2009

President James Michel’s special adviser Dr Rolph Payet has called on the new US administration to address the issue of climate change with the least possible delay and with targets that can stabilise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Addressing the National Press Club in Washington DC on Wednesday last week, he argued that people from small islands and from polar regions are already seeing the effects of climate change right on their doorsteps.

Decisive action must be taken this year at the forthcoming global climate conference in Denmark, he said. Achieving stronger targets means that we, islanders and polar people, will have a better chance of preserving our homes.

The National Press Club, which is near the White House, is a 100-year-old institution where all the presidents of the United States since Theodore Roosevelt, as well as kings and queens, prime ministers, senators and congressmen have delivered statements on global and national issues.

Dr Payet, who shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a lead author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, spoke alongside Sheila Watt-Cloutier, 2007 Nobel Prize nominee and long-time activist for the polar indigenous people, Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, an organisation that publishes the State of the World Report, and popular writer Lester Brown, whose book Plan 3.0: Mobilising to Save Civilisation has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Dr Payet was on a week-long mission in Washington, where he also attended the Many Strong Voices meeting and had talks with a number of international organisations such as the International Environmental Law Institute and the Nature Conservancy.