“As expected the climate crisis has arrived and reached explosive proportions, so much so that there is now talk of a ‘state of climate emergency’,” the joint statement by Mattarella, Croatian President Zoran Milanović, Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, Maltese President George Vella, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar, read.
“At the end of July, the United Nations Secretary General called the current crisis a state of ‘global boiling’.
“Its effects are especially visible in our region, the Mediterranean, which is severely affected and at immediate risk of not only water and electricity scarcity, but also of floods, widespread heat waves, fires and desertification.
“Extreme natural phenomena are destroying the ecosystem and threatening our everyday life, our way of life,” the statement read.
“There is no more time to waste, no more time to compromise for political or economic reasons.
“It is imperative to act and take urgent effective initiatives.
“All Mediterranean countries must coordinate and react, engage in a collective effort to halt and reverse the effects of the climate crisis.
“It is the duty of all of us to act in this direction and to adopt concrete policies to this effort.
“(We must) raise public awareness, educate and inspire in everyone the ethics of environmental responsibility.
“Not only for the present, but also for the future of our children and future generations.”
Mattarella has previously urged “targeted” prevention on the climate crisis after Italy last week battled the deadly and destructive fires in the south and equally fatal storms in the north left at least seven people dead and caused untold devastation of property, infrastructure and crops.
In the latest in a string of warnings on the climate crisis, he said in a message to a Sardinian mayor on the 40th anniversary of a wildfire that killed nine people, that “the environment and nature are a precious resource, to be protected with rigour, through a constant commitment to care for the territory and targeted prevention actions.”
ANSA
