There is a “serious risk” that the UN climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, “will not deliver”, the UN chief told journalists on Friday in Rome, just ahead of the G20 Summit of leading industrialized nations.
Secretary-General António Guterres warned that current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), formal government commitments to progressively ambitious climate actions, still condemn the world to a “calamitous” 2.7 degrees Celsius increase in global warming.
“Even if recent pledges were clear and credible, and there are serious questions about some of them, we are still careening towards climate catastrophe,” he said.
Under the best-case scenario, temperatures will rise well above two degrees, which Guterres called “a disaster.”
“If we want real success…we need more ambition and more action,” he said. This will only be possible with a “massive mobilization” of political will and that requires trust, he said, which, amidst “serious questions of credibility,” is in “short supply.”
The UN chief said there were “dangerous levels of mistrust” among the G20 bloc, and between developed and developing countries, including emerging economies.
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