President Donald Trump’s announced plans to withdraw the United States (U.S) from multiple climate-related United Nations treaties have continued to attract criticisms from environmental groups and legal experts in view of what they considered as the undesirability to current efforts by global leaders to jointly address climate change threats globally.
Reuters reported on Friday that the plan by Trump to discontinue U.S’ involvement in climate change was seen by legal experts as illegal while the United Nations (U.N) foresees that the withdrawal of the U.S from the treaties may be counterproductive for the country.
According to online medium, some legal experts say that the decision of Trump may be illegal, adding that Congress will need to approve U.S’ exit as its membership was a decision taken by the U.S. Senate, which unanimously adopted that climate treaty more than 30 years ago.
In his remarks, the U.N. Climate Chief, Simon Stiell, was quoted as saying that the U.S President’s plan will be a “collosal own goal which will leave the U.S. less secure and less prosperous,” adding that the U.S. leaving these treaties at such a time is harmful to its economy and living standards “as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse.”
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The Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), a decades-old Pacific organisation for environmental protection, was reported to have called for the U.S. to go through a formal process to withdraw its support of the international treaties.
It would be recalled that last year, the Trump administration withdrew the U.S from the Paris Agreement, an action which drew condemnations from development analysts and global leaders.
On Wednesday, in a Memo to senior administration officials, Trump listed 35 non-U.N. groups and 31 U.N. entities for the planned withdrawal by the U.S
Based on the list, one of the most important environmental accords the U.S. is pulling out of is the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has been described by experts as the “bedrock” climate treaty which is parent agreement to the 2015 Paris climate deal.
