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World leaders are due to announce more ambitious plans to combat global warming on Saturday, the fifth anniversary of the signing of the historic Paris Agreement.
The Climate Ambition Summit, held online, comes as the United Nations warns that current commitments to tackle rising global temperatures are inadequate.
Britain, the UN and France are co-sponsors of the summit, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson will open at 1400 GMT and which will be streamed live on weatherambitionsummit2020.org.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Frenchman Emmanuel Macron are among the participating heads of state, with spaces to speak to the leaders of the countries that presented the most ambitious plans.
These include Honduras and Guatemala, which were recently hit by hurricanes, as well as India, which is battling increasingly erratic weather patterns and air pollution.
The business figures they will be speaking reportedly include Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, who has committed to making its entire supply chain carbon neutral by 2030.
But the major economies, including Australia, Brazil and South Africa, are absent. Australia has not committed to net zero emissions by 2050 and has been accused of setting targets that are too weak.
Speakers will deliver short video messages, with organizers saying they will announce “new and ambitious commitments on climate change” and that “there will be no room for blanket statements.”
The 2015 Paris climate accord saw signatories commit to taking steps to limit temperature increases to “well below” 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and try to limit them to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But the UN warned this week that under current commitments, Earth is still on track for a “catastrophic temperature rise” of more than 3.0 ° C this century.
He warned that this will create a crisis that “will dwarf the impacts of Covid-19” and has said that current promises to reduce emissions to comply with the Paris agreement were “woefully inadequate.”
‘Moment of responsibility’
Greenpeace called the summit, seen as a warm-up for the UN climate change conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, next November, a “moment of responsibility for leaders.”
Under the “ratchet” mechanism of the Paris agreement, countries must submit renewed emission reduction plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs, every five years.
The deadline for this is December 31st.
Countries are ready to announce efforts to reduce national emissions, long-term strategies, and financial commitments to support the most vulnerable.
More than 110 countries have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. China, the world’s biggest polluter, announced in September that it plans to achieve net zero emissions by 2060.
The summit comes as EU leaders pledged on Friday to cut emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
Britain, out of the EU since January, announced this month that it would seek to cut emissions by 68 percent over the same period.
Johnson has laid out plans for a “green industrial revolution” that creates up to 250,000 jobs.
And before the summit opened, he pledged to end all direct government support for the fossil fuel energy sector abroad.
The past five years have been the warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization, a UN agency, with concerns about the growing number of wildfires, storms and floods.
The UN has said that the drop in emissions due to the global coronavirus pandemic is too small to stop rising temperatures.
The United States, the world’s second-largest polluter after China, abandoned the Paris Agreement under President Donald Trump, who questioned the accepted science behind climate change.
Incoming US climate envoy John Kerry plans to re-enter the deal immediately and President-elect Joe Biden has set a carbon neutral target for 2050.
(AFP)
