World leaders commit to stopping climate change

Government and private sector leaders have announced significant and concrete new steps to combat the climate crisis at the Climate Action Summit.

The event brought together countries, governments, businesses and civil society to address climate change issues.

Some of the commitments included:

• A number of countries agreeing to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 and boosting their natural action plans.
• Over 100 business leaders delivered concrete actions to align with the Paris Agreement targets, and speed up the transition from the grey to green economy.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that current research shows the Earth faces at least 3°C of global heating by the end of the century.

“Governments are here to show you are serious about enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement,” he said.

“Cities and businesses are here showing what leadership looks like, investing in a green future. Financial actors are here to scale up action and deploy resources in fundamentally new and meaningful ways. Coalitions are here with partnerships and initiatives to move us closer to a resilient, carbon-neutral world by 2050.”

The UN estimates that the world would need to increase its efforts between three- and five-fold to contain climate change and avoid escalating climate damage already taking place around the world.

Some of the major announcements at the Summit included:

• France announced that it would not enter into any trade agreement with countries that have policies counter to the Paris Agreement.
• Germany committed to carbon neutrality by 2050.
• Twelve countries made financial commitments to the Green Climate Fund, the official financial mechanism to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change. This is in addition to recent announcements from Norway, Germany, France and the UK. The UK has doubled its overall international climate finance to £11.6 billion for the period from 2020 to 2025.
• India pledged to increase renewable energy capacity to 175GW by 2022 and committed to further increasing to 450GW, and announced that 80 countries have joined the International Solar Alliance.
• China said it would pursue a path of high-quality growth and low-carbon development, and announced a partnership that could unlock up to 12 billion tonnes of global emissions reductions and removals annually through nature-based solutions.
• The EU announced at least 25 per cent of its next budget will be devoted to climate-related activities.
• The Russian Federation announced that they will ratify the Paris Agreement, bringing the total number of countries that have joined the Agreement to 187.
• Pakistan said it would plant more than 10 billion trees over the next five years.

On closing the Summit, Guterres stated “you have delivered a boost in momentum, cooperation and ambition. But we have a long way to go.”

Click here to read more.