Hunger strike gains momentum at Warsaw climate talks

Civil society members have joined with the lead negotiator from the Philippines, Yeb Sano, to fast for the duration of the UNFCCC climate negotiations in protest at the lack of progress in an agreement to reduce global emissions and in establishing Green climate finance to aid developing countries mitigation and adaptation.

Civil society members joined the fast after Yeb Sano's powerful speech at the opening session on Monday on the impact of Super Typhoon Haiyan (known in the Philippines as Yolanda) which devastated eastern coastal regions, with estimates of more than 10,000 deaths, and at an economic cost estimated at $70 billion to the Filipino economy.

Related: Stand with the Philippines Petition on Avaaz by Yeb Sano, to be delivered to negotiators. | Tcktcktck - COP19 intensifies as civil society joins Philippines in fasting for the climate

Philippines negotiator launches hunger strike in Warsaw "We need an emergency climate pathway"

Half a world away from the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan, the Philippines delegation is in Warsaw, Poland, for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks. Yeb Sano leads the delegation and has made a speech at the plenary of the importance for taking substantive climate action now.

You may recall Yeb Sano made an impassioned speech last year at the Doha meeting after Typhoon Bopha slammed into the Philippines. Once again, this mild mannered diplomat feels the personal anguish of a disaster unfolding at home, indeed affecting his own family.

It is clear for several years that developing countries like the Philippines are bearing the brunt of the high costs of climate change. But even western countries are feeling the power of extreme weather events like superstorm Sandy, the Colorado extreme rainfall and floods, Alberta Floods, the Russian heatwave of 2010, England's trend for more intense rainfall, Australia's angry summer and sizzling autumn of 2013 or the unusually early Sydney bushfires.