Addressing the participants to the citizens’ climate change and energy consultation, held today in Sarajevo, the Minister of Physical Planning, Civil Engineering and Ecology of Republic of Srpska, Srebrenka Golić, said that the climate change is a problem of the whole humankind, involving the leaders of the most developed countries in the world and that the climate change significantly influenced the floods that affected Bosnia and Herzegovina in May last year. The citizens’ consultation was organised on the initiative of the president of France, which will hosting the global conference for representatives of the governments of all the countries parties to the UN on climate change and energy, in December this year.
"The Ministry headed by me, as the competent authority for BiH (Focal Point), has developed the first and second national reports for all activities related to climate change and energy. The reports have been adopted and rated well, we are currently working on drafting a third report, and we have developed a strategy on low-carbon development, which was also adopted by the governments of both entities and the BiH Council of Ministers,” said Minister Golić.
She recalled that the BiH Designated National Authority (DNA) was formed for implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol, adding that the UN Convention on Climate Change adopted four projects for the whole of BiH and which refer to renewable energy sources.
According to her, at the UN Conference on Climate Change held in November 2012, in the capital of Qatar, a project "Clean Vrbas" was initiated, securing five million dollars for the municipalities in the Vrbas river basin from the Global Environment Fund (GEF).
French Ambassador to BiH, Claire Bodonyi, said that today's planetary debate was organized on the initiative of her country, because an international conference on climate change will be organized in Paris at the end of this year.
"The conference will try to determine how each country could and should face it," Bodonyi explained, adding that all the countries will prepare for the conference based on the votes of their citizens.
She pointed out that today was an opportunity for the civil society to reflect, that is, present its proposals and recommendations, adding that an action will be organized at the global level through the Internet during the day, where the civil societies in each country will present suggestions and proposals on how to fight the climate change.
Representative of one of the organisers of today's event, Zlatan Kulenović, said that the consultation was intended as a one-day event of identical content and programmes in all the countries with 100 "common" citizens participating in each of them, in accordance with the demographic structure of a certain country.