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By Wangari Maathai

Over the next few days, the world’s most powerful leaders will gather around two summit tables, the G8 in Huntsville and the G20 in Toronto. At the top of their agenda will be the economic recession, an immediate crisis that threatens global economic stability.

However, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his counterparts consider ways to face this challenge, I urge them also to focus on the longer-term threat to our economic security: climate change.

The current upheaval caused by the economic recession pales in comparison to the potential impacts of climate change, which, if unabated, threatens to bring more disasters, famine, disease, resource scarcity, human displacement and migrations and economic instability than ever before.

Already, there are warning signs. Wherever I travel in Africa, environmental degradation and competition for resources is a source of conflict and economic instability. The rapid desertification that has taken place in the last few decades in northern Darfur has spread southward, forcing Arab Sudanese nomads further and further south and bringing them into conflict with Sudanese farmers. In the Niger delta, the relentless pursuit of oil and gas to feed a world addicted to oil is behind much of the chronic violence and instability.

Too often such conflicts are labelled as inter-ethnic or religious, ignoring the fact that climate change, environmental degradation and the pursuit of fossil fuels is the root cause of so much conflict in the world today.

Droughts in Kenya, wildfires in California and melting glaciers in our mountains are further indications that we are on the tipping point of a catastrophe scientists have long been predicting. No country or community is immune from climate change, but the greatest tragedy is that those who are most affected and who are least able to adapt and mitigate against climate change, are least responsible. While leaders of the world’s richest countries bear the greatest responsibility for rising global temperatures, it is those already living on the edge of poverty who will feel the impacts most acutely.

So as world leaders sit down to make decisions that will affect the future of life on our planet, I urge them to consider those who have no voice at the table but are living the daily reality of climate change. They include the citizens of small island states who will lose their homes as the seas consume the coastline and the women farmers of Africa, whose crops will dry up and whose children will suffer extensive malnutrition. For them, as well as millions of others, global warming is not a trivial concern to be dealt with as an after-thought. It is a matter of life and death.

I urge world leaders to act. In recent weeks, members of the international community have come forward to insist that climate change be on the agenda at the upcoming summits. This is a great step forward. But we must do more than talk. We must act.

In Copenhagen, developed countries agreed to provide “new and additional” financial resources to support mitigation and adaptation measures in the developing world — both immediately and over the long term. But where this funding will come from is largely undetermined.

At the upcoming summits world leaders should build upon these promises by working together to develop alternative and innovative financial methods to deliver this funding, by helping developing countries find alternative and renewable sources of energy, and by enabling these countries to participate in the world carbon market so they can develop their own industry based on renewable energy sources.

Meeting these international obligations must be accompanied by action at home. Rich countries have committed to reducing their emissions and phasing out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. They must now prove they are serious, by coming to the table with plans and timelines to reach these goals. And it is possible. As the response to the global economic meltdown has shown, through collaboration states are able to mobilize funds quickly. I ask that they react with the same urgency to climate change.

Climate finance is not an act of charity. It is an investment in a shared future. The environment and the resources we use — oil, energy, food, land and forests — are the basis upon which development happens, and development is what generates a strong economy.

They are also the foundation for a stable society. When the global community meets in Cancun in December to focus on climate change, it has the potential to create an ambitious and legally binding climate deal that will help secure this future.

For this to happen, world leaders must commit to funding climate action and pledging to reduce their own emissions now. Climate change should not be “a side issue” in the high-level meetings in Canada. It should be central.

See this article in its original context on www.thestar.com.