South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo on Wednesday urged the international community to make more efforts to fight against climate change.
"Climate change is a global issue that affects us all regardless of territorial boundaries... so the challenges cannot be resolved by any single county," the prime minister said while addressing to an international conference "Green Korea 2009" held here.
The prime minister said global warming is changing the climate and affecting people's life on an "unprecedented scale and pace", citing Morakot, the latest typhoon in Asia, which has killed nearly 500 people and forcing the evacuation of thousands in China 's Taiwan alone.
As to the Korean Peninsula, global warming also left its impact, noting that the average temperature rose by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, at a rate much higher than the average increase of 0.74 degree in global temperatures over the last 150 years, the prime minister said.
To combat climate change, the government launched a low-carbon and green growth policy -- Green New Deal-- at the beginning of the year.
Han said the government is trying to change the dated growth pattern that resulted in mutual exclusion between economic development and quality of life, and will constantly make efforts to develop a mutually beneficial relationship between growth and environment.
Since the world is facing the crisis, "we must do our utmost to turn climate danger into change opportunity, a change for the better, a change for moving into a new paradigm of green growth," Han said.
(Xinhua News Agency September 9, 2009)
