Com444 Poorest Nations Global Agenda

COMM 444—Global Agenda

Poorest Nations

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I want to first thank everyone for coming to the Copenhagen conference on climate change. I am honored to speak on the behalf of the Nigerian government. and agree with the previous speeches about the importance of the world committing to solve the climate change crisis for our future generations. I am here today to give Nigeria’s point of view on the effects of climate change on future generations, but also to hopefully motivate everyone to spring into action, and to formulate a shared vision to achieve our goal, of addressing climate change before it gets worse. Africa can easily be said to contribute the least of any continent to global warming (Fields 1). “It is a cruel irony that, in many experts’ opinion, the people living on the continent that has contributed the least to global warming are in line to be the hardest hit by the resulting climate change” (Fields 1). Our main concern is that Nigeria’s future generations will suffer the most severe consequences from climate change, in terms of impacts and our countries capability to respond. I want to evaluate Nigeria’s vulnerability to global warming effects, create awareness around the world, as well as in Africa about the detrimental causes global warming, as well as promote a collaborative effort to address the climate change issue.

The IPCC illustrates that Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability (IPCC). The 2007 Human Development Report explains that future generations are not the only ones that will have to cope with a problem they did not create, but that the “world’s poor will suffer the earliest and most damaging impacts. Rich nations and their citizens account for the over-whelming bulk of the greenhouse gases locked in the Earth’s atmosphere. But, poor countries and their citizens will pay the highest price for climate change” (UNDP 9). Wealthy industrialized nations...