The annual Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP25) began in Madrid on December 2, largely unnoticed in Sri Lanka which is just settling down after a bruising presidential election. But given the critical importance of climate change to this beautiful island with its miles of unspoilt beaches, populated low lands, breathtaking tea covered mountains, and weather dependent agriculture, it should have received more attention.

Sri Lanka became party to the Paris Accord of 2016, an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, on September 21, 2016. COP25 was moved to Madrid after original host Chile, beset by ongoing and widespread social disorder, requested in late October for it to be moved elsewhere.

Some 50 world leaders were expected to attend COP25, although a notable absentee was U.S. President Donald Trump, who, in 2017 announced his country’s withdrawal from the 2016 Paris Accord. The leaders of Russia, China, Brazil and India were also missing from Madrid. The Paris Accord which involved a mix of compromises was largely the work of a handful of world leaders, including President Obama and president Xi Jinping.

Writing on the subject at the time, I expressed my concern that while a great effort was made by all negotiating parties to accommodate the USA as much as possible, given the U.S. reluctance to become party to the Kyoto Protocol, it would be a forlorn hope to expect the world’s second biggest emitter of green house gasses to remain faithful to its own commitments. Similarly, I doubted whether the goals of the Accord to increase the ability of parties to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change, and make “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development” would be realised. The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi will be present in Madrid, leading a congressional delegation.

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist and the initiator of the school strikes for climate in September 2019, which were attended by over four million people, will be there too.

Speaking at the opening of COP25, an emotionless, almost dull, UN Secretary-General António Guterres somberly noted that “By the end of the coming decade we will be on one of two paths, one of which is sleepwalking past the point of no return,” He also asked “Do we want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand and fiddled as the planet burned?” The other pathway, Guterres said, was to aim for carbon neutrality by 2050”. “There are calls from young people to do more, much more. They know we need to get on the right path today, not tomorrow, and COP25 offers us an opportunity.” Ever since the UNFCCC was adopted in 1992 in Rio and was followed up with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the world has heard similar dire warnings from a succession of Secretaries-General and the scientific community. While some countries have heeded these forecasts of gloom and doom and begun to take necessary action, the countries mainly responsible historically for the current state of affairs have not chosen to proactively adopt the mitigation measures so desperately required.

Climate change is becoming the most important global environmental challenge, with implications for food production, water supply, health, energy security, coastal settlements, forest ecosystems, coastal economies, etc.

The writer is former ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations