UN CLIMATE SUMMIT: KIKWETE PUSHES FOR CARBON MITIGATION

President Jakaya Kikwete has told a United Nations meeting that the world's top emitters of carbon must take action and not leave Africa to confront climate change consequences single handedly.

He told the UN General Assembly here that the African continent was the least emitter yet it faces significant consequences of what is put in the air from elsewhere by powerful economies.

President Kikwete was presenting a common position for Africa on climate change as the leader of the Conference of African Heads of State on Climate Change (CAHOSCC) at the UN Climate Summit.

It was a one-day meeting hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and open to leaders of all 193 UN member states. President Kikwete's appeal was emphatic.

He asked all nations to ensure that the December 2015 Climate Change meeting in Paris succeeds in getting a binding agreement on climate change.

He urged the global community to see the merit and reduce existing concentrations in the atmosphere. The UN General Assembly meeting started on Wednesday and has marked climate change as one of its top issues.

In presenting Africa's common position, President Kikwete was optimistic that collective action was possible since the developed nations, which are the biggest emitters of carbon have the finances and technology to revert the situation. "We appeal to them to take action to save the rest of the globe.

This is what the climate change convention and Kyoto protocol requires all of us to do," he said. He applauded the big nations ready to cut emissions and asked others in the same league but still indifferent to change and confront the situation.

"Temperatures are rising, sea levels are rising, lakes and rivers are rising, deserts are expanding, floods are increasing, new pests and diseases that affect plants, animals and human beings are cropping up," he said.

He said that social economic progress is being affected yet African countries have little room for adaptation.

However, Mr Kikwete also told the UN General Assembly that Africa was not just seated without taking action, as it was confronting the situation through adaptations like climate smart agriculture to ensure food security, clean energy initiatives and tree planting programmes.

"But Africa can't succeed in all these programmes without the support of the big economies which are bigger carbon emitters," he added.

He noted that the plea from Africa was not new as similar calls have been made for bigger emitters to honour their commitments to take action.

He said Africa emits only three percent but takes on much of what is emitted from elsewhere. "We in Africa, therefore, ask the big emitters to take action.

All of us must make efforts to ensure the temperature does not go beyond two degrees celciusm," he said. He also urged that Africa should get support for rural electrification as an alternative to communities that depend on trees for energy, giving an example of Dar es Salaam that consumes over 200,000 bags of charcoal per day.

He concluded his address at the UN Climate Change Summit by saying that Africa needs support to be able to further embrace smart agriculture. Earlier, US President Barack Obama told the meeting that pollution must be contained to address climate change.

He said that the US and China are the biggest economies that should take the lead for the rest of the world in carbon reduction. Mr Obama said obtaining broad agreement to combat global climate change does not come easy.

"In each of our countries, there are interests that will be resistant to action. In each country there is a suspicion that if we act and other countries don't -- that we will be at an economic disadvantage.

But we have to lead," Obama said.Obama noted that some countries are more impacted than others by climate change, but said, "No nation is immune."

Obama added, "We cannot condemn our children and their children to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair -- not when we have the means, the technological innovation and the scientific imagination to begin the work of repairing it right now," he said.

At the same meeting on Wednesday, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameroon said climate change is a threat to economic prosperity, noting that his country had taken action by putting the climate change Act and plan to have cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. He called on political leaders to listen to scientific advice.