Thank you very much for this opportunity for the International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent to speak at this session.

Madame Chair, at the 30th International Red Cross/Red Crescent Conference in November 2007, 186 National Societies and 194 governments acknowledged that the humanitarian consequences of climate change are one of the main global humanitarian challenges.

All agreed to step up, in our countries, our actions with local communities, in dialogue with governments, to be better prepared for the climate change related risks that can no longer be avoided, in particular related to extreme weather events, erratic weather patterns and spread of diseases.

It was agreed as well that climate change should be included in the agenda of each country’s national disaster management committee.

Already in more than 30 countries national workshops have been organized, and a process to make climate risks assessments for the work of the Red Cross and Red Crescent has began in serious in these countries.

This work will proceed, with governments partnering their Red Cross/Red Crescent National Societies, recognizing that as auxiliaries to the public authorities in the humanitarian field, National Societies are in a position to bring advice of the real needs of the most vulnerable in their communities into national planning and programming.

Madame Chair, The IFRC has participated in a number of workshops of the Nairobi Work Programme.

Our objective is to step up our cooperation with governments and through them with UNFCCC to better protect the most vulnerable people, the poorest of the poor against the risks of climate change.

New and innovative partnerships with international climate change knowledge centres to improve our early warning systems, have already proven their value and reduced the impacts of disasters because of timely warnings.

We intend to report on these experiences at the 2008 Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention, in Poznan, for we see this national-level activity as a crucial element in cooperation of the type encompassed by Item 12 of our agenda today.

We will be discussing the outcomes of this forum with other members of the international humanitarian community in the months ahead, and we hope that stronger links can be made with that community in the crucial period to come.