Bali (Indonesia), Dec. 13, 2007.-  The Andean Community demanded a stronger commitment from the industrialized countries in order to confront global warming and more resources for adjustment to climate change. 

This demand was made in Bali, during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, by Colombian Environment Minister, Juan Lozano Ramírez, in representation of the Andean Community.  

After voicing the CAN’s support for the initiative of setting targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 30% by 2020 and 50% by 2050, Lozano stressed that "adjustment to climate change is a matter of long-term survival for many nations.” 

He based his assertion on the forecasts included in the Fourth Report of the IPCC that point out that “the effects of global warming will continue to be generated for years and even for centuries.”  

The Minister maintained that the CAN countries, despite contributing less than 1% to global greenhouse gas pollution, are determined to act in order to confront this phenomenon and are doing so. 

"We are doing this because we are extremely vulnerable to climate change and because we cannot fail to act,” he stated emphatically and gave several examples of what is being done at the national and regional levels.  “At the regional level, we are working on a Regional Climate Change Strategy and have made efforts to socialize and to discuss the issue, as we did at the “Latin Climate” event held in Ecuador last October,” he pointed out.

But resources are scarce, he went on to say.  “Recent international studies state that the cost of adjustment to climate change in developing countries is on the order of 50 billion dollars a year, while barely 200 million dollars are available for that purpose within the framework of the Convention on Climate Change.  

He explained that it is for this reason that the CAN countries consider it “essential to have a world adjustment program after 2012 with sufficient funding to permit the transfer of technology and strengthening of endogenous capacities to confront climate change.”  “This is an essential element if the post-2012 system is to be more equitable and just than the present one,” he stressed. 

Financial incentives, he stated, should be another important element of the post-2012 system, preferably ones that operate through market mechanisms in order to avoid deforestation in developing countries.  "Recognition of the efforts being made by the countries in the Andean region and other developing countries to conserve tropical forests is essential for halting forest destruction,” he pointed out.