“Today was a great day – a historic day. Never before have so many leaders gathered to commit to action on climate change,” Mr. Ban said as he summed up the event.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed bold new actions to address climate change that were announced at the Climate Summit in New York.
During the Climate Summit, various bodies and entities announced a scale of commitments and initiatives to help address the issue of climate change (see related story) that were warmly received by the U.N. chief.
“Today was a great day – a historic day. Never before have so many leaders gathered to commit to action on climate change,” Mr. Ban said as he summed up the event.
“The Summit delivered,” said the Secretary-General, citing that the leaders had reaffirmed their determination to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius by cutting emissions.
Mr. Ban noted that finance,public and private sources showed the way forward for mobilizing the needed resources, as leaders expressed strong support for the Green Climate Fund. A total of $2.3 billion was pledged towards the Fund’s initial capitalization on the day itself, with others committed contributions by November 2014.
“A new coalition of Governments, business, finance, multilateral development banks and civil society leaders announced their commitment to mobilize upwards of $200 billion for financing low-carbon and climate-resilient development,” he said. He added that private banks have also announced that they would issue $20 billion in “Green Bonds” and that they would double the market to $50 billion by 2015, next year.
Many government and business leaders also supported putting a price on carbon through various instruments and called for intensified efforts to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.
Looking ahead, the U.N. chief urged the participants to maintain the spirit of compromise and commitment that characterized the discourse at the Summit. “We must fulfill and expand on all the pledges and initiatives brought forward today.”
In going to the road to Lima and Paris – milestone meetings of the parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change – in December 2014 and 2015, Mr. Ban said “let us look back on today as the day we decided – as a human family – to put our house in order to make it livable for future generations. Today’s Summit has shown that we can rise to the climate challenge.” – L. Polintan
