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The Speaker of the House of Commons has chaired a debate on climate change at an international parliamentary conference.
Transferred from his usual spot on the Speaker's chair to the Park Plaza Hotel, Westminster Bridge, John Bercow MP acted as chairman at a debate for the 3rd International Parliamentary Conference on Climate Change, hosted by the UK Branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
The debate, which centred on the challenges that democracy can pose for climate change, featured speakers from non-Commonwealth countries including Sweden, Chile and Angola alongside Commonwealth nations Tuvalu, Bangladesh and Canada, amongst others.
Opening the debate Catherine Cusack, a member of the Legislative Council in New South Wales, Australia, said that "our system of democracy is profoundly affected by climate change."
Cusack went on to note the pressure that politicians face in dealing with global warming.
"Scientists have come to politicians and claimed a disaster, whilst expecting politicians to show leadership on this," she noted.
Following on from Cusack, a number of speakers at the debate stated that their countries had experienced aspects of climate change - most notably representatives from Pakistan and Swaziland, both nations to suffer from severe drought.
The most common theme in the debate became the difficulty of balancing ambition to implement climate change policies, with the more intrinsic political desire to seek re-election.
Speaking on this theme Hon. Rajesh Bagwan, an MP from Mauritius, asked delegates: "Will governments take the risk of getting voted out of office for implementing unpopular policies?", whilst Hon. Patricia Hajabakiga MP, a member of the East Africa Legislative Assembly, said:
"Politicians are too short-termist and too short-sighted. They want to be re-elected and so may be unwilling to propose policies that they deem to be politically unpopular."
However, the gathered delegates agreed that climate-change policies should be non-partisan and that individual states needed to increase co-operation across borders to find suitable solutions.
"Global climate change is a reality and we need nations to co-operate to seek to resolve the inherent problems we face. Currently many countries are working in a nation-by-nation way, rather than sharing ideas and that is not helpful," noted Gerald Jennissen, a member of the legislative assembly in Manitoba, Canada.
And delegates agreed that whilst the Copenhagen summit had not achieved the results that they had hoped for, leading to a "climate of distrust", as Leo Brincat of Malta stated, they were more hopeful for future climate change summits, if international collaboration could be increased.
For more information on the 3rd international parliamentary conference on climate change, please view this press release and CPA UK's dedicated ePolitix page.
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