UN official praises 'huge progress' in fight against climate change

LIMA -- The world has made huge progress in its fight against climate change in the past five or six years, UN climate talks chief said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a panel discussion on climate change in Lima, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Management, praised the work that has been done, but noted it was not enough.

"Five or six years ago, we were heading for an increase of four or five degrees in the global temperature, which would have been catastrophic," she said. "Now, due to policies already enacted or to be enacted, the risk is down to a three degree increase. This is still dangerous but better than where we were before."

Ahead of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 21) to be held in Paris in December, 146 countries have presented climate change plans set to start in 2020.

These plans were made possible because countries have realized that they should not act on climate change in order to save the planet, but because it is in their own interest to do so, she said.

However, Figueres said this timeline was still not enough to limit global warming to two degrees within the desired timeframe. Therefore, she called on countries to start their 2020 climate change plans early.

"There is an urgency in climate change that is absent in all other development issues. We cannot wait until 2020, policies must be fast forwarded and scaled up. We must see how quickly we can close the gap," she said.

Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for the Financial Times and moderator of the panel, challenged her stance, asking whether this could be done on the 100 billion U.S. dollars a year pledged to combat climate change.

Admitting that trillions of dollars would be needed, Figueres said that a number of costs, including human, technological and infrastructure costs, needed to be factored in.

While this might seem daunting to certain governments, she said "countries can see what others are doing, take the right measures, and adopt technologies to fight climate change."

"There is peer pressure among emerging countries. When China commits billions to help developing countries fight climate change, it helps change minds," Figueres said.