Finland Times

 

helicopter to take samples of biofuel and coal mixture combustion gases Hanasaari power plant savukaasuvanasta in Helsinki on 25 March 2014. Photo – Lehtikuva.

Although the Finnish government praised the climate change agreement reached in Paris, Finnish environmentalists emphasized on the challenges remaining.

 

Minister for the Environment Kimmo Tiilikainen described the agreement on climate change reached in Paris on Saturday as “a turning point”, but noted that it is not perfect.

 

Prime Minister Juha Sipilä said Finland wants the agreement to bring a fast change with an impact.

 

Finnish environment and development organizations in a joint statement on Saturday night, howev-er, said that the measures the governments have pledged may not be enough to reach the tempera-ture goals.

 

“The emission cutback levels that the countries have promised would lead to a nearly three degree warming,” said Kaarina Kolle, climate specialist of the World Wildlife Fund. She underlined the need for early action.

 

Finnish organizations said the emission targets of Finland and the EU have been outdated now, due to the new and more accurate defining of temperature.

 

Jonas Bistrom, an analyst for Kepa, a Finnish umbrella organization for civil society development cooperation organizations expressed concern that financing could be taken out of the existing de-velopment aid.

 

He told newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet that, “Rich countries shall continue to finance the climate change of the poorer, at least 100 billion dollars from 2020 and new goals will be defined to 2025. That is the good news. The bad news is that taking that money from development aid has not been prohibited.”

 

News Agency STT adds: Oras Tynkkynen, Vihreä liitto (Green League) lawmaker and senior ad-viser to the Finnish Innovation Fund-Sitra said that the goal set in the Paris climate deal is realistic for the country.

 

According to Tynkkynen, the government programme encompasses significant steps towards an energy economy, free from fossil fuels.

 

“The government programme promises to completely abandon the use of coal and halve the use of extracted oil in the next decade,” said Tynkkynen.

 

The universal climate deal in Paris saw the countries commit to the objective of accelerating the re-duction of use of fossil fuels by 2050.

 

The benchmark set aims to reduce human-produced emissions so that it would not exceed the amount which the nature is able to absorb through natural carbon sinks such as through the forests. This entails a strong reduction of the use of fossil fuels.

 

Fossil fuels include coal, natural gas, oils and also peat is considered a fossil fuel due to its long re-newal time.

 

The historic Paris agreement on climate change was adopted with no objection on Saturday by the 196 parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) hosted by France.