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PRESIDENT Mugabe

Caesar Zvayi: Editor
PRESIDENT returned home yesterday from New York, the United States where he joined other heads of state and government at two high-level events at the United Nations headquarters.

First on the President’s hectic two-day programme was a High-Level Thematic Debate on Sustainable Development Goals that the President co-chaired together with UN General Assembly president Mr Mogens Lykketoft.

In his address to the thematic debate, President Mugabe called on the duplicitous western rabble-rousers to drop the path of destructive engagement manifest in instruments of coercion like economic sanctions in favour of co-operation to help the world achieve the post-2015 development agenda enshrined in the SGDs.

The SDGs are a set of aspiration Goals with 169 targets adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in the wake of the lapse of the Millennium Development Goals that were tenable in 2015. They encompass 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues among them ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests.

The President also signed the highly subscribed Paris Climate Change Agreement that drew over 170 world leaders — the largest ever single-day turn-out for a signing ceremony at the UN — where world leaders vowed to fight climate change.

In his address after the High-Level signing of the Paris Climate Agreement on Thursday, President Mugabe pledged Zimbabwe’s commitment to global efforts at climate change mitigation and adaptation saying Zimbabwe had since set up a High-Level Committee in his Office to drive the efforts.

Zimbabwe, he said, aimed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent below the projected business as usual energy emissions per capita by 2020.

Under the Paris Agreement that was adopted by all 196 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at COP21 in Paris last year, countries set their own greenhouse gas emission reduction targets with the objective of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and given the grave risks of continued warming, to strive for 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Though the targets are not legally binding on member states, countries must update them every five years.

Already, member states are under pressure to do more to curb global warming amid revelations the initial targets pledged before COP21 were at variance with the Paris Agreement’s long-term objective to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

Global average temperatures have already climbed by almost 1 degree C, and last year — which was the hottest on record — saw Zimbabwe experience, first hand, a heatwave that broke decades-old temperature records throughout the country culminating in some road surfaces melting and livestock dying due to heat stress.

President Mugabe; who was accompanied by Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, and Environment, Water and Climate Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri; was welcomed at Harare International Airport by the two vice presidents Cdes Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko, Defence Minister Dr Sydney Sekeramayi, State Security Minister Kembo Mohadi, Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Dr Chris Mushowe and Transport and Infrastructure Development Minister Dr Joram Gumbo, chief secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda and service chiefs.