Doha, March 08 (QNA) – Assistant Secretary-General, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director of Bureau for Policy and Program Support Haoling Xu said Wednesday that the development efforts in the Doha Program of Action (DPoA) are a source of hope and of great importance as they seek to ensure high living standards in the least developed countries (LDCs).
In an exclusive interview with Qatar News Agency (QNA), Haoling Xu stressed the need to build human capacity and ensure the capital flow in order to deal with all other challenges.
The member states of the United Nations adopted the DPoA a year ago, to help the LDCs achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs), he said, noting that the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) is held one year after the adoption of the DPoA, with the aim of evaluating what has been achieved, discussing the main challenges and problems facing the LDCs, identifying the best ways and practices to move forward and mobilizing international support for them.
The conference is another occasion to see the LDCs’ challenges and obstacles to their peoples’ aspirations, stressing the need for an international collaboration and solidarity for these aspirations to come true, he added, hailing the LDC5 as a means of renewing the international support provided to help the LDCs.
Haoling Xu highlighted the State of Qatar’s important role in assisting and supporting the LDCs with Doha having played a major and inspiring role for the international community to unite and discuss the existing challenges and the results achieved. Qatar has launched many projects to assist the LDCs, most notably the Climate Promise, a UNDP’s program seeking to help 120 countries around the world to strengthen their national contributions and support for the LDCs.
On UNDP, Haoling Xu said that the program’s activities in 170 countries and regions around the world, including all the LDCs, stressing that the program’s role lies in supporting countries to achieve their goals of human and sustainable development.
The UNDP aims to support the LDCs’ aspirations to graduate and to achieve the goal of human development, he said, highlighting the collaboration with the LDCs in many areas, such as poverty eradication, major social protection programs and other related projects.
He stressed the need for backing the LDCs, which are the most vulnerable to climate change, to adapt and enhance their abilities to store drinking water so that they can deal with fluctuating weather patterns.
All countries have made commitments on climate change, and the world will not achieve the target limit of 1.5 C, and the best that can be done is to achieve the 2.6 C target, which can be disastrous, not for the LDCs, but also for other coastal countries and the population in other geographical areas due to extreme weather conditions and high temperatures that have an impact on health, production and lifestyle, he told QNA.
Haoling Xu warned against many potential negative effects due to climate change, prompting the need for all countries to renew their commitments in order to achieve the 1.5 C target limit, and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
Source: Qatar News Agency