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“The president-elect of the United States (Joe Biden) has announced that the United States returns to the Paris Agreement, where it should never have left. This is undoubtedly great news ”, highlighted this Saturday the President Sebastián Piñera, adding that he expects the North American country to commit to carbon neutrality “as China, Japan and Brazil have done in recent days.”
The President’s sayings were framed in the middle of his speech as a co-host at the Climate Ambition Summit. The instance was summoned -together with the heads of Government of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson; France, Emmanuel Macron; Italy, Giuseppe Conte; and the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres- on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, adopted by almost 200 countries at COP21.
In the instance, Piñera stressed that “the threat of global warming is real, it is serious and it is now” and added that “The time for diagnoses is over, the time for action has arrived. That is why Chile is proud to convene, together with the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the United Nations, to commemorate this fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement and to revive its spirit, its strength, its sense of urgency ”.
In this sense, he reinforced the need to achieve carbon neutrality before 2050 and that the climate agreement reached in 2015 was “a first step, a commitment, a roadmap”, and that “the only way to achieve it is through of nationally determined efforts that are proportional to the capacities and responsibilities of each country ”.
For this reason, he highlighted the reaffirmation that Chile has promoted – together with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UNDP – the Climate Ambition Alliance (Alliance for Climate Ambition). “We started with a group of six countries, and today there are more than 123 countries, 1,400 companies, 500 cities, 570 universities ”, instance where improved climate action plans are presented (Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, its acronym in English).
In the case of Chile, Piñera noted, among the commitments are “the closure of all coal plants, the electrification of our entire public transport system before 2040, and it also includes a huge effort to reforest and protect our forests, and protect our oceans. This commitment is materialized in that 30% of our land and 30% of our seas will be under protection ”.
Also, he called “To the heads of state and government present here, we must all move decisively towards development models that are low in emissions and commit to net zero emissions as soon as possible. The president-elect of the United States has announced that the United States returns to the Paris Agreement, where it should never have left. This is certainly great news. But it’s not enough”.
And I add: “That is why we hope that the US will also commit to carbon neutrality as countries such as China, Japan and Brazil have done in recent days and weeks.”
“This week I sent an invitation to President-elect Biden to join this Climate Ambition Alliance and achieve carbon neutrality together before 2050, because we all have to make a lot of efforts to achieve it, ”said Piñera.
This instance, it should be noted, takes place one year after the COP25 – chaired by Chile – which was held in Spain between December 2 and 15, 2019.
