Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos said Saturday he was disappointed about the results of the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in South Africa earlier this month.
In a speech, the president said he regretted the lack of political will and commitment to reach an accord on limiting carbon emissions.
“I regret that in the meeting in South Africa where our environment minister was the countries who are most responsible for climate change, who are emitting carbon which makes temperatures rise, were not able to make a concrete commitment,” said Santos.
“We unfortunately saw little political will to compromise … and that the world does not see that we all are killing ourselves,” the president added.
Representatives from 194 countries gathered in the South-African city of Durban from November 28 until December 11 to reach agreement on measures to prevent a global temperature rise of more than 2°C.
The representatives failed to reach an agreement that legally binds U.N. members to limit carbon emissions and punishes those who fail to.
Colombia was one of the countries most affected by climate-related emergencies in 2010; hundreds of Colombians died and millions were displaced after excessive rains caused deadly floods and landslides. Since September this year, 159 people died and 200,000 have been affected by this year’s second rainy season.