Delivering a historic address on The State of the Planet, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called on the world to “turn this momentum into a movement”, setting the stage for dramatically scaled-up ambition on tackling climate change and nature loss over the coming year.

Mr Guterres framed his speech, delivered at Columbia University, within the context of humanities current “suicidal” trajectory and emphasised our urgent need to “step towards a safer, more sustainable and equitable path.”

Citing a number of initiatives and global negotiations, such as Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance today with $5.1 trillion dollars of assets and the meeting in Kunming, China next year to forge a post-2020 biodiversity framework, he pointed to the many positive actions already underway.

Despite the progress made to-date, he urged for greater leadership on several key areas.

“We must remember, there can be no separating climate action from the larger planetary picture. Everything is interlinked – the global commons and global well-being. That means we must act more broadly, more holistically, across many fronts, to secure the health of our planet on which all life depends,” explained Mr Guterres.

Mr Guterres, who will also be leading talks at COP26 in Glasgow next year, called for world leaders to:

  • Put a price on carbon.
  • Phase out fossil fuel finance and end fossil fuel subsidies.
  • Stop building new coal power plants — and halt coal power financing domestically and overseas. To shift the tax burden from income to carbon, and from taxpayers to polluters.
  • Integrate the goal of carbon neutrality into all economic and fiscal policies and decisions. And to make climate-related financial risk disclosures mandatory. Funding should flow to the green economy, resilience, adaptation and just transition programmes.
  • Align all public and private financial flows behind the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. Multilateral, regional and national development institutions, and private banks, must all commit to align their lending to the global net zero objective

Additionally, the channelling of financing for achieving climate and nature goals must not overlook adaptation measures.

“Adaptation must not be the forgotten component of climate action. Until now, adaptation represents only 20 per cent of climate finance, reaching $30 billion on average in 2017 and 2018. We must deliver a breakthrough on adaptation to protect the world – and especially the most vulnerable people and countries — from climate impacts,” said Mr Guterres.

Speaking of private sectors’ role in delivering climate action, the Secretary-General spoke of recent net zero emissions commitments sending a clear signal to investors, markets and finance ministers.

Coinciding with the address was the release of a special issue of the Production Gap Report produced by multiple international institutions, including UNEP, which finds that the COVID-19 recovery marks a potential turning point, where countries must change course to avoid locking in levels of coal, oil, and gas production far higher than consistent with a 1.5°C limit.

View recorded speech here

 


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Image of UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivering State of the Planet speech on 2 December 2020

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