UN chief calls for greater ambition and urgency in tackling climate change

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on nations to urgently address the acceleration of climate change and its devastating effects. Guterres spoke at a press conference during the launch of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018. “The data released in this report give cause for great concern. The past four years were the warmest on record, with the global average surface temperature in 2018 approximately 1°C above the pre-industrial baseline,” Guterres said in the WMO report. The report highlighted record sea level rise and exceptionally high land and ocean temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations over the past four years. The report also pointed out the dramatic impact of extreme weather conditions, the most recent being Tropical Cyclone Idai, which caused devastating floods, killed at least 557 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others across Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. The UN will convene a Climate Action Summit at Heads of State level in September this year and Guterres sent out a strong message to leaders warning against complacency ahead of the meeting. “I am telling leaders: “Don’t come with a speech; come with a plan.” I am calling on them to come to the summit with concrete, realistic plans to put us on a sustainable path, once and for all,” Guterres told journalists at the press conference. Guterres says climate disruption will be irreversible unless countries show how they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade and get to net zero emissions globally by 2050.