"Climate Change and Green Economy" conference

"Climate Change and Green Economy" conference

BELGRADE -- Vuk Jeremić opened on Thursday in Belgrade the international conference dubbed "Climate Change and the Green Economy".

The president of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD), Serbia's former foreign minister and former UN General Assembly president underscored in his address that "South Eastern Europe should be more active in international negotiations on climate change."

He voiced confidence that a global shift to the green economy is a unique opportunity for under-developed regions such as ours to bridge the generation lag that divides it from the developed ones.

That could be the biggest challenge for our generation, he said, voicing hope that South Eastern Europe will become the leader in the green economy, which is, as he put it, a strategic ambition which should draw us all together as that is the only sustainable way toward prosperity in the 21st century.

Jeremić noted that South Eastern Europe was in May hit by the worst floods since rainfall measurements had begun, and warned that such catastrophes are increasingly becoming a common thing.

Today's conference is an opportunity for considering ways in which South Eastern Europe can participate more actively in the ongoing international negotiations on climate change, and ways in which it can capitalize on the shift to the green economy.

Several months ago, the EU decided to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent in the next 15 years, and last week China and the U.S. signaled major efforts to achieve the deep decarbonization of the global economy by the mid-century.

"I think that we can be cautiously optimistic that...