UN Secretary General António Guterres warned Monday at the highly-anticipated UN climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, that “unless we collectively change course, there is a high risk of failure”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he had heard “heartening affirmations” at a meeting of world leaders on Monday about increasing financial assistance to help developing nations deal with climate change.
This gap and a lack of climate programs for developing countries from those countries mean the Glasgow outcome would fall far short of an accord to put the world on the track for reducing devastating climate change, Guterres said.
This round-table discussion aims at ensuring a positive outcome at the United Nations conference on climate change to be held from 31 October to 12 November in Glasgow, though recent reports show that big economies are way off the tracks on emissions reduction targets and obligations on climate financing.
The roundtable brought together the United States, China, India, EU countries, Costa Rica, the Maldives, as well as a mixing of developing countries, middleincome countries and developed states.
The only direct measures in response to Secretary-General’s reminders seemed to come from Sweden and Denmark, which announced half or more of their funding to adapt to climate change.
Guterres will also urge donor countries and multilateral development banks to make progress toward his target of increasing the share of resources to assist countries adapt to climate change, from 21 percent now to 50 percent, Hart said.
A U.N. report Friday found recent pledges to control carbon dioxide emissions have steered the world on track for 2.7 centigrade (4.9 degrees F) of warming since the preindustrial era.
