FOREIGN Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Senator Kamina Johnson Smith says the Government is taking steps to reduce and manage the effects of climate change across all sectors through national and international partnerships.

She was addressing the LASCO REAP awards ceremony held recently at the Jamaica Pegasus in New Kingston.

Johnson Smith said that the country’s efforts have been recognised by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who recently invited Prime Minister Andrew Holness, along with French President Emmanuel Macron, to lead a political initiative to mobilise climate financing to support the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

The invitation to mobilise Government and private sector to build a political consensus and increase momentum to raise $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020 was outlined in a letter to Holness, in which Secretary General Guterres noted the leadership of Jamaica on the issue of climate finance.

“We are proud that our prime minister was asked… to seek to get countries to stick to a promise they made years ago to pull together US$100 billion over a period of time, to support vulnerable countries and to fight against climate change,” she noted.

To accelerate actions to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, Secretary General Guterres will host the 2019 Climate Action Summit on September 23.

“We look forward to hearing all of the countries that have pledged to make sure that countries like Jamaica, all over the world, are able to build their own resilience,” Senator Johnson Smith said.

The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping global temperature rise this century well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.

To achieve these goals, appropriate financial flows, a new technology framework and an enhanced capacity-building framework are to be put in place to support action by developing countries and vulnerable countries, in line with their national objectives.

The LASCO REAP awards ceremony rewarded students for participation in sustainable environmental practices, including tree planting, recycling, energy conservation and for well-kept school and community environs.