UN Secretary-General António Guterres, at the opening of the climate summit in New York on Monday, September 23, warned against the imminent adverse effects of climate change. “If we do not change our way of life urgently, we will endanger life itself,” he stressed.

“Nature around the world is striking back with fury,” Guterres said, and recalled that the past five years, and July 2019 in particular, have been the hottest period on record. “Our heated earth is shrilling: ‘Stop,'” he continued. Glaciers are melting, the extent of deserts is increasing, drought is leading to wildfires, heat waves are getting worse, natural disasters are becoming more frequent, the UN secretary general noted, and stressed that the goal of the summit is not to negotiate, because you can’t negotiate with nature, but to act.

195 countries of the world present their plans on climate protection

Representatives of 195 countries of the world take part in the climate summit. They are presenting their climate protection plans for the coming years related to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Its main goal is to prevent a global temperature increase in the current century above 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. As of September 2019, 186 countries have joined the agreement.

The conference brings together world leaders, members of governments, finance, business, and civil society.

Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg at the UN summit

Even U.S. President Donald Trump showed up in the room where the U.N. climate summit is taking place, even though he had previously said he had no intention of attending the conference.

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who spearheaded the broad youth climate movement Fridays For Future, made an angry speech in front of the crowd. She accused older generations of failing to make decisions to prevent a global climate catastrophe. “We are on the brink of mass death, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales and perpetual economic growth,” Tunberg stressed.

Speaking shortly after the Swedish girl, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had heard the call of younger generations. In a short address, she reiterated the willingness of the government she leads to take the necessary decisions to save the climate.

Germany will allocate 250 million euros to save rainforests

German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Müller and World Bank President David Melpas agreed at the climate summit to implement the ProGreen Program for saving the Amazonian and African rainforests and fighting illegal logging. Within its framework, Germany intends to invest 200 million euros, and in total it is to raise one billion dollars.

Berlin will also give 20 million euros to support indigenous people in need of forest protection and 30 million euros to the Central African Forest Initiative. Protecting forests is necessary for “the survival of all of us,” Merkel said at a summit meeting on fires in the Amazon rainforest.



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The main topics of the summit are announced to be the climate, the consequences of the pandemic, vaccination campaigns and economic recovery.

U.S. President Joe Biden said that the G20 has made progress in combating the pandemic, economic recovery and climate issues.

“This has been a challenging year marked by enormous global challenges, of which pandemic, sustained economic recovery and combating the climate crisis are critical. I believe we have made tangible progress on each of these issues,” the United States leader said.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called combating climate change the greatest challenge of our time.

“The transition to clean energy is the key to achieving the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, we can no longer postpone it,” the Italian leader said.

Draghi noted that the coronavirus pandemic is not yet over, but vaccination campaigns have made it possible to “look to the future with more or some optimism.”

“Successful vaccination campaigns and coordinated action by governments and central banks have allowed the global economy to recover,” the prime minister added.

Meanwhile, the Italian leader noted that there is an unequal approach to the distribution of vaccines worldwide, with high income countries having 70% of those vaccinated with at least one dose, and poor countries with less than 3%.

“These disparities are morally unacceptable and undermine global economic recovery,” Draghi said.

Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G20’s decision to scrap funding for coal power would accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

“Equally important is the fact that an agreement has been reached to stop financing coal power in the near future. China has taken an important step by joining the others. This means that the transition to other sources of energy will be much faster, here, in our view, gas should play a central role,” Merkel said.

According to the acting German chancellor, the G20 countries plan to discuss support for the use of gas also in the energy of African countries.

British Prince Charles, president of Britain’s World Wildlife Fund, said the upcoming COP26 climate summit (to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12) is the “last chance” to save the planet.

“We must turn our pretty words into pretty actions. The enormity of climate change dominates people’s conversations, from the news to their living rooms. The future of humanity and nature itself is at stake,” said Prince Charles.

He added that to reduce temperatures by 1.5 degrees annually, trillions of dollars of investment are needed to build the necessary infrastructure. But no government has that kind of money. That is why cooperation between the private and public sector is needed.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the G20 summit did not meet his expectations.

“Although I welcome the reaffirmation of the G20’s commitment to global solutions, I am leaving Rome with unfulfilled hopes – but at least they are not buried,” Gutteres wrote on Twitter.

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Climate and Environment

Participants at the Global Climate Summit, which concluded in San Francisco on Friday, made more than 500 specific commitments, including a transition to a low-carbon economy. If these promises are kept, there will be more than 65 million new jobs by 2030.

This week at the Global Climate Summit in San Francisco, where the U.N. Charter was adopted 73 years ago, government, civil society and business representatives, city leaders and investors pledged to fight global warming decisively and protect the planet.

“This Summit, a call to action,” will make an important contribution to our common goal: to keep global temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius, as called for in the Paris Agreement. Governments around the world will now be able to act more decisively…,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is charged with coordinating the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

According to Espinosa, humanity today faces a serious challenge that poses a threat to current and future generations. “Climate change is an adversary that we have created with our own hands, and today it has gained such strength that it threatens to defeat us. This problem can only be dealt with by taking the international rule of law as its foundation,” the UN representative stressed. She recalled that this is why the Paris Agreement was concluded. Its signing, Espinosa said, was an unprecedented success for multilateral diplomacy.

“This agreement has everything we need to combat climate change. But there is still much work to be done to realize its full potential,” Patricia Espinosa stressed.

As part of the Paris Agreement, nations agreed not to allow global warming to exceed two degrees Celsius, ideally no more than one and a half degrees. “But the commitments that nations have already made through the Paris Agreement will result in a global temperature rise of three degrees Celsius by 2100. We have heard repeatedly in recent days that this will lead to devastating consequences around the world and destabilize the world order,” said the UN representative.

On the eve of the San Francisco meeting, the UN Secretary-General also warned that climate change could spiral out of control, with dire consequences for the economy, peace and security. Over the past decade, he said, extreme weather events and health damage from the burning of fossil fuels have cost the United States $240 billion annually. Over the next ten years alone, these losses will increase by half. By 2030, the decline in productivity due to the rising heat will result in a $2 trillion loss.

The U.N. head called on politicians, leaders, businessmen, scientists, and the entire public to overcome the paralysis. “We need to act – both financially and morally. We have all the means necessary to do so. What is missing, even after the Paris Agreement, is true leadership and courage,” said António Guterres.

Jayatma Vikramanayake, UN Youth Chief’s Envoy, addressed the San Francisco Summit. She stressed that their decisions will affect the lives of future generations.

The San Francisco meeting took place at a time when Hurricane Florence hit the United States and Typhoon Mangkhut hit the Philippines. Scientists believe that climate change may have influenced the intensity of hurricanes, increased precipitation and changes in the trajectory and speed of air masses.

Last year, climate change-related disasters caused thousands of deaths and $320 billion in economic damage. This year saw widespread flooding in the Indian state of Kerala, unprecedented wildfires in California and Canada, and a sharp rise in temperatures in the Arctic.

At the San Francisco summit, UN representatives urged delegates to intensify action to implement the Paris Agreement, relying on a system of multilateral cooperation.

Participants at this California meeting made some 500 commitments, many of which focus on the development of renewable energy sources as well as the proper management of land, forests and oceans.

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On Thursday, April 22, leaders from the United States, China, Germany, France, Russia, India, Canada, Japan and other countries spoke at the summit. Climate challenges and threats were discussed, as well as the need for joint efforts to preserve the climate on the planet.

During his speech, Joe Biden stated the goal of the USA to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 50-52% of its 2005 level for 10 years and to reach a net zero emissions level by 2050. He urged other leaders to join the climate process.

“This summit is the first step in the journey we will take together. The world depends on us, the well-being of our employees depends on us, the wealth of our economies depends on us. We must move right now to take decisive action to create a better future for the implementation of the green energy era. Every country must set climate goals that will create new jobs, drive healthy economies, and mitigate climate impacts. We must move quickly to meet these challenges,” Biden said during the speech.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said during the summit that to mitigate climate change, countries around the world must set themselves more than ambitious goals for the next 10 years.

“We must reduce our carbon emissions, reduce our consumption of minerals, and stop using coal for our power plants. Developed countries must fulfill their climate commitments. We must mobilize political leadership and work together to overcome the effects of climate change and build a good future for all,” Guterres said.

The UN Secretary-General called on world leaders to build a global coalition to achieve zero carbon emissions by mid-century.

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At the conference it was supposed to agree on the rules of the new economic mechanism of the Paris Agreement, to solve the issue of financing the mechanism of payment for losses from irreversible climate change (“Losses and Damage”), to take increased specific obligations on greenhouse gas emissions.

At the previous conference in Katowice, it was declared that to achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement to keep the global average temperature rise within 1.5 °С, it is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 47% and by the middle of the 21st century to reduce their quantity to zero, as well as to carry out “decarbonization” of the key sectors of the economy: energy, industry, construction and transport.

As UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the conference, despite some positive signs from some representatives of big business and financial institutions toward a green economy, these steps are not enough. “What is needed today is not incremental steps, but revolutionary transformations,” he stressed. But even responsible companies are being hampered by governments, including the “perverse practice of subsidizing fossil energy,” clearly aimed at undermining the decisions of the Paris Agreement. The secretary general called on all governments to follow the lead of the 65 countries that pledged in 2020 to present strategies to achieve zero emissions in 2050. The most important task is to make coal a thing of the past and stop building coal-fired power plants, as well as to stop fossil fuel extraction and accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources.

And yet, the international community, as the secretary general emphasized, missed the opportunity to demonstrate a willingness to take action on climate change mitigation, adaptation to its effects, and financial support for developing countries. At the conference, states were expected to make increased commitments to reduce greenhouse gases in amounts that would meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius, but this did not happen. Due to serious disagreements between countries, the Conference participants could not reach unanimity on specific measures to implement Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which was the most important task of the conference in Madrid. The conference was unanimous on only one point: the conference did not live up to expectations and its results were virtually nil.

The conference did not agree on the rules of the new economic mechanism of the Paris Agreement, which would have allowed the trading of quotas, would have ensured the implementation of investment projects to reduce emissions. This was mainly due to the desire of large countries such as Brazil, China and Australia to transfer unused quotas from the period of the Kyoto Protocol.

The issue of increasing payments for losses due to climate change was also not resolved, because there was simply no source of financing for it.

Almost all participants of the conference foaming at the mouth about the need to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible by 2030, because droughts, storms, floods, the ocean will flood half of the land, but in fact, large countries hid their heads in the sand and did not announce new goals (“ambitions”) to reduce emissions. Only 84 countries have announced increases in their emission reduction goals, but overall, they are responsible for only a little over 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not among them are China, India, Russia and Japan, which are the leaders in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. And the United States, which ranks second in emissions, is known to have withdrawn from the Paris Agreement altogether. According to experts, the obligations assumed by these 84 countries will allow avoiding an increase in the temperature on the planet by 4-5 degrees. And this is exactly the course of events that we should be prepared for, unless the already obsolete provisions of the Paris Agreement are amended.

It was decided to postpone all these issues on the implementation of the Paris Agreement for discussion at the next climate conference in December 2020 in Glasgow.

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