YEREVAN, DECEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian has addressed a video message at the Climate Ambition Summit, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

The virtual summit has been initiated by the United Nations, UK and France in cooperation with Italy and Chile. The summit unites heads of state, business leaders, representatives of civilian community who are ready to assume new commitments in fighting climate change and fulfilling the Paris agreement.

The President stated that Armenia has come up with an idea which might be groundbreaking to resolve climate-related financial issues for the developed and developing countries. “We would like to introduce to Debt For Climate Swap, the idea of potential scalability for different countries. This idea offers leveraging additional finance into climate action”, he said.

In his remarks President Sarkissian said that these are challenging times for Armenia. “Declaration of more ambitious climate goals is also an opportunity for Armenia to rethink the whole economic and national development pattern and accelerate actions towards the transition to more sustainable, resilient and low-carbon economy”, he noted. He said Armenia’s vision rests on solid and effective adaptation strategy based on the ecosystem approach, forestation and scale, investment in renewable energy and energy-efficiency. “We target 15% of solar energy share in total energy production by 2030, and the share of zero emission, power generation in the total will come close to 55%”, he said.

The Armenian President has appealed to all the international partners to look closely at this idea, evaluate it and make it if possible into a tool which will make climate-related contributions more affordable, timely and efficient.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan