Preventing conflicts requires closing development gaps, shrinking inequality and bringing hope to people around the globe, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Tuesday.
After extending the COP26 climate negotiations an extra day, nearly 200 countries meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, adopted on Saturday an outcome document that, according to the UN Secretary-General, “reflects the interests, the contradictions, and the state of political will in the world today”.
Governments need to show the necessary ambition on mitigation, adaptation, and finance in a balanced way, and they can’t settle for the “lowest common denominator”, the UN Secretary-General has said in Glasgow, where crucial climate negotiations are in the final stretch. Meanwhile, a coalition of countries launched a new pledge to end gas and oil extraction, and cities were the theme of the day.
The Registrar of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has a clear message to States: it is always better to approach the Court to settle a dispute between nations, rather than choosing armed conflict.
Massive floods, devastating wildfires, and rising seas – along with the countless lives they take and livelihoods they upend – are realities many nations are already facing. Voices from the front lines of climate change and its impacts were centre stage to start week two of COP26, which kicked off Monday in Glasgow with a focus on ‘adaptation, loss and damage’.
Fittingly, the sun broke through the clouds over Glasgow on Thursday as delegations and participants prepared for ‘energy day’ at COP26, one of the key thematic sessions taking place during the UN climate summit.
It’s ‘Finance Day’ at COP26, and the spotlight is on a big announcement: nearly 500 global financial services firms agreed on Wednesday to align $130 trillion – some 40 per cent of the world’s financial assets – with the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement, including limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
A pivotal pledge to save and restore our planet’s forests was officially announced on the second day of the COP26 World Leaders Summit, and with that deal came a long list of commitments from public and private sector actors to combat climate change, curb biodiversity destruction and hunger, and to protect indigenous peoples’ rights.
As the World Leaders Summit opened on day two of COP26, UN chief António Guterres sent a stark message to the international community. “We are digging our own graves”, he said, referring to the addiction to fossil fuels which threatens to push humanity and the planet, to the brink, through unsustainable global heating.
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.
