Foreign
By Kennedy Nnamani
THE United States has expressed its willingness and commitment to address the issues of climate change, plastic pollution posing a great menace to every aspect of human life.
Through its agencies, including but not limited to the Agency for International Development headed by Samantha Power, the 19th administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Department of Energy, DOE, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, NOAA, the Biden-led administration expressed readiness to meet crisis swiftly and smartly by investing in adaptation measures to build communities that are more disaster-ready.
Samantha Power, in a statement dated February 28, 2022, noted that the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, warns that the climate crisis threatens every aspect of human life and demonstrates the urgent need to expand the ability to adapt. She warned that the report indicates that there is the need for fast adaptation to be able to withstand the impending disaster.
“The main finding of the report is clear: we are not adapting fast enough or at the scale required to withstand the effects of climate change. The climate crisis is already driving more frequent and intense disasters, accelerating food and water scarcity and global inequities, and causing widespread harm to people, ecosystems, economies and infrastructure.
“The science also shows that many of the impacts of climate change are now underway and unavoidable, reaffirming what climate experts have known for some time – adaptation is no longer a luxury, but a necessity,” she noted.
While expressing optimism to the fight, Power noted that the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience, PREPARE, which was launched by President Joe Biden at COP26, would empower not less than half a billion people most impacted by the climate crisis to adapt to climate change by 2030.
Also speaking in a statement, Antony J. Blinken, the U.S Secretary of State, noted that the PREPARE will bring together the United States’ diplomatic, development, and technical expertise to help the developing countries adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change by 2030.
According to him, approval of this, IPCC, report is the result of more than five years of work by hundreds of scientists from the United States and around the world to comprehensively assess what is known about the global impacts of and vulnerabilities to climate change.
In the same vein, Ned Price, the spokesperson for the United States Department of State, noted that the United States welcomes the historic opportunity at the United Nations Environment Assembly, UNEA 5.2, to start an intergovernmental stakeholder’s process to fight plastic pollution. He underlined that the United States is already acting both domestically and internationally to address this global challenge.
He noted that through the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the Sustainable Materials Management, SMM, programme, the U.S reaffirmed the goal to increase the U.S. recycling rate to 50 percent by 2030, identifying strategic objectives and actions needed to create a stronger, more resilient, and cost-effective U.S. municipal solid waste recycling system.
According to him, WasteWise, EPA program, Trash Free Waters, a voluntary programme, work with businesses, governments, stakeholder, and nonprofit organizations to assist U.S. and international communities to promote the use and reuse of materials more productively over their entire life cycles.
“Partners demonstrate how they reduce waste, practice environmental stewardship and incorporate sustainable materials management into their business model, including their waste-handling processes,” he said.
He also noted that the American government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, has flagged off the Clean Cities, Blue Ocean programme for the implementation of the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act and reducing the estimated 11 million tonnes of plastic that flow into the ocean each year, completed the Municipal Waste Recycling Programme to reduce land-based sources of ocean plastic pollution in what he called “four key countries”, which include Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam and launched the Private Sector Partnerships to leverage more than $100 million in a private-sector investment strategy managed by Circulate Capital and funded by multinational companies.
KN
Tags: ANTONY J. Blinken Kennedy Nnamani Ned Price Samantha Power USAID
