UN chief appeals to G7 leaders for ‘strong commitment’ and political will to tackle climate emergency
This was the urgent message
delivered on Twitter from Biarritz, France, where the UN chief has been
meeting for the past two days with G7 leaders to mobilize action ahead
of his Climate Action Summit next month in New York.
Speaking to reporters, Mr. Guterres said the UN Summit – and the need for concrete action – come against the backdrop of a “dramatic climate emergency,” with the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
reporting the 2015 to 2019 are on track to be the five hottest years
ever recorded, and historically high concentrations of C02 in the
atmosphere.
And with Greenland’s ice melting, and record-setting fires blazing
from the Arctic to Alaska and the Amazon, the Secretary-General said,
“we are much worse than what we were during Paris,” referring to the
2015 conference in the French capital that give birth to the landmark climate accord aimed at easing global warming and curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
He said that recent scientific evidence provided by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
has made clear that “we absolutely need to keep the rise of temperature
to 1.5 degrees Celsius to the end of the century and to be carbon
neutral in 2050 and to have a 45 per cent reduction of emissions by
2030.”
“And so, it’s absolutely essential that countries commit themselves
to increase what was promised in Paris because what was promised [there]
is not enough,” said Mr. Guterres, calling for more ambition and more
commitment to that end.
The UN chief said society is mobilizing, as well as the world’s
youth, “and we want to have countries coming to New York and being able
to commit to be carbon neutral in 2050, being able to increase
substantially their ambition in the Nationally Determined Contributions to climate action that have to be reviewed in 2020.” Read more
