Interview: Climate change threatens achievement of MDGs - UNDP official

Writing for Xinhua, Stephanie Parker reported on an interview with Stephen Gold, the head of climate change with the UNDP's energy and environment group, who said that, as a result of climate change, an increasing number of droughts and more erratic storms are threatening to undermine decades of development gains and risk future development trajectories.

"UNDP has seen first hand that tackling climate change is central to achieving poverty reduction and sustainable development because the two are linked together," he said, adding that UNDP is supporting climate preparations in two main areas, including adaptation resilience and disaster risk reduction, and will address the need to scale up climate change initiatives and early warning systems at the UN Climate Summit in New York, and in negotiations in Lima in late 2014 and in Paris in late 2015.