A youth organisation has called on citizens to take climate change seriously as it has become a global concern and has caused insecurities affecting world peace.
Climate change will be the major focus at this year`s International day of peace commemorations which will run under the theme ‘Climate change for peace’.
Each year the International Day of Peace is observed around the world on 21 September.
Speaking to CITE, the Vice President of African Youth Initiative on Climate Change Zimbabwe (AYICCZim) Elizabeth Gulugulu Machache said climate change has become a huge problem and is causing havoc in the lives of people.
“Imagine if people’s stomachs are empty because of food insecurity caused by severe droughts and floods would there be peace? The answer is NO, having realized the effects of Climate Change on peace is what led to the theme,” said Machache.
She added that climate change has brought untold suffering to many people world over.
“What I want people to learn everyday is that if we do not act against the effects of Climate Change we will continually have problems with peace, if we do not act on Climate Change nature will demonstrate and force us to act and so the time to act is now,” said Machache.
She noted that they will host online discussions on climate change issues so as to reach out to a larger audience.
“Everyone is welcome to visit our social media pages as we will be online discussing Climate emergency and peace also how it’s everyone’s responsibility to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change so as to maintain peace,” she said.
On 23 September 2019, the United Nations will convene a Climate Action Summit with concrete and realistic plans to accelerate action to implement the Paris Agreement.
The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
