UN Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP-15)

The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (or COP-15) will begin today, and end on 18 December, in Copenhagen, Denmark. This conference is seen to be the way to open a new path towards tackling climate change as the first commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol draws to a close in 2012 (wasn't the world supposed to end in 2012?). Top world leaders will be attending the summit, including US President Barack Obama, who has changed his schedule to time his arrival with the last day of the conference, in order to provide more punch to the commitments expected to be made.

What can we expect from this conference? Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) journalism student Gan Pei Ling wrote an excellent article about this event here. The Kyoto Protocol was blighted by the refusal of some powerful nations notably the US to ratify the treaty. However, more and more countries and people are seeing global warming and climate change as a real threat to human survival, and have pledged to step up efforts towards environmental protection on the road to Copenhagen.

COP-15 will prove to be a turning point in human history, for good or otherwise. In Fighting Climate Change, UN Secretary-General ban Ki Moon warned that "Yet, in the longer run, no one-rich or poor-can remain immune from the dangers brought by climate change." In his 2009 Peace Proposal, Soka Gakkai International (SGI) President Daisaku Ikeda wrote, "Global warming is having profound impacts on ecosystems everywhere. In addition to causing meteorological disasters, it has the potential to aggravate armed conflicts and the problems of poverty and hunger. It epitomizes the twenty-first-century crisis of human civilization...Climate change is both an ongoing multidimensional crisis and a threat to the future of
humankind, in that it burdens future generations with immense challenges of dire consequence." (p. 10)

SGI President Ikeda called for humanitarian competition to be at the heart of efforts to solve the environmental impasse that we are in. We must realise that it is not only up to the Presidents and Prime Ministers to solve this pressing issue, but ordinary citizens like us must play an important role.

The state of the environment is a mirror of our lives as human beings. A lasting solution towards the environmental crisis can only be found if we, as Nichiren Daishonin wrote, "quickly reform the tenets that you hold in your heart" (Writings of Nichiren Daishoni, p. 25). Mankind is racing towards the precipice of destruction as we have worshipped the wrong tenets. We have forgotten that the environment is a gift to humanity, to be cared for, to be cherished and to be loved, not to be raped and plundered as we please.

COP-15 is not just the business of the heads of states and governments. The world is not theirs alone. It is our business too.