Global agreement on climate change to be reached in Paris

Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia and the president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said he was confident that countries would be able to reach an agreement to tackle climate change during their meeting in Paris late this year.

"The reason is that the world and the international community has learnt a lot since Copenhagen," Rudd explained in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"We've all seen evidences of extreme weather events in the five years since Copenhagen, and I think our global public opinions, China, the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are all observing what happens when climate change starts to take hold," he added.

Rudd anticipated that the agreement will ensure the world will not go beyond the two-degree increase of global temperature, as scientists agreed it is the threshold for catastrophic climate change.

A UN summit in Copenhagen in 2009 set a goal of keeping temperature rises at no more than two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times.

Talking about the role of the United Nations, Rudd called on the UN to be more relevant in dealing with big challenges facing the international community.

The UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly last month, setting new 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to wipe out extreme poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change over the next 15 years.

The challenge will be how to turn commitments of UN member states into development, Rudd said, adding that "the key challenge is how to take the Sustainable Development Goals framework and apply it to the concrete challenges of development of more than 100 countries in the world that are still in the process of development."