Guterres urges ending “climate carnage”, supporting most-impacted states

Guterres urges ending “climate carnage”, supporting most-impacted states
By Marwa Nassar - -

United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for ending what he called “climate carnage” as well as providing more support for the countries that are the most-impacted but have done very little to cause the phenomenon.

“My objective is to make it clear that …we need cooperation, we need dialogue, and the present terrible geopolitical divides are not allowing it to happen. We need to change course,” Guterres said in a wide-ranging interview with UN News ahead of the General Assembly’s annual high-level week.

He told UN News: “We need to increase support to developing countries, not only in the reduction of emissions, but in building resilience, in building the sustainable infrastructure that is necessary for those countries to be able to [withstand] the impacts that are already devastating them. Most of the [climate] hotspots in the world [are] countries that did not contribute in a meaningful way to climate change.”

Guterres said “Climate change is the defining issue of our time,” adding that “It is absolutely essential to reduce emissions now. And unfortunately, while we should be able to reduce 45 per cent of the emissions [by] 2030, we are [instead facing] an increase in emissions [by] 14 percent in 2030. So, we absolutely need to reverse this trend. We are heading into a catastrophic situation, and we have not much time to turn things around.”

“And at the same time, when we look at Pakistan, the level of destruction and the area flooded is three times the [size] of my country [Portugal]. We need to increase support to developing countries, not only in the reduction of emissions, but in building resilience, in building the sustainable infrastructure necessary for those countries to be able to [withstand] the impacts that are already devastating them. Most of the [climate] hotspots in the world are countries that did not contribute in a meaningful way to climate change,” he said.

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