<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, recalled this Tuesday, during the Climate Summit (COP29), the victims of the DANA in Spain to ask the international community for more “ambition” in the fight against a climate change that “kills”.</strong></h4> “I have witnessed one of the biggest climate disasters in our history, in Spain,” said Sánchez during his speech at the High-Level event on climate finance ‘The Make-or-Break Moment for Sustainable Future’, within the framework of the XXIX United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP29), which is being held in Baku (Azerbaijan). “More than 200 people have lost their lives in my country and they are the reason why I am here today, to say, loud and clear, that climate change kills,” he continued. “To tackle climate change, ambition is necessary” and, therefore, “Baku must be remembered as the moment in which we transformed words into numbers,” warned Sánchez. “The international climate finance target will measure our commitment to future generations, and we are all aware that we need to be much more ambitious if we want to achieve the objectives in both mitigation and adaptation,” he added. “Sustainable development and the fight against climate change are two sides of the same coin” and, therefore, “the new financial architecture must reflect the current reality, since the financing mobilized in developed countries, both public and private, is not enough,” continued the President of the Government. “We must be able to innovate in our financing mechanism, incorporating more and better the private sector, mobilizing alternative sources such as large fortunes and working on equal terms with emerging countries to increase the volumes of financing given the growing effort they have been making,” he added. “We must reflect the new reality of a world that has changed, giving new instruments and ideas,” because “what has happened in my country, in Valencia, in Spain, is not an isolated event, it happens in every corner of the planet day after day. We cannot look the other way. Let us act,” he concluded. Later, Pedro Sánchez spoke at the COP29 plenary, in which he reiterated that “climate change kills.” “Last year alone, it killed more than 300,000 people and has just contributed to the deaths of 222 of my fellow countrymen, in the greatest natural disaster in our history, a disaster that, according to the first investigations, would have been less probable and less intense without the effect of climate change,” he said. It is “a terrible truth that science has been pointing out for too long and that, nevertheless, many continue to disregard: climate change kills,” he insisted. “That is why I am here, because at this moment there is only one thing as important as helping the victims of this terrible tragedy: to prevent it from happening again, to prevent natural disasters from repeating and multiplying,” he continued.
