The world is facing “a grave climate emergency”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a climate meeting in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) capital of Abu Dhabi on Sunday, urging all participants to “seize this opportunity to take bold climate action”.
“Climate disruption is happening now, and it is happening to all of us”, UN News Center cites Mr. Guterres as saying at the meeting in Abu Dhabi. “It is progressing even faster than the world’s top scientists have predicted”.
Just last week, reports surfaced that “Himalayan glaciers are melting at double the rate since the turn of this century”, according to Mr. Guterres.
Moreover, he pointed out that “Arctic permafrost is melting decades earlier than even worst-case scenarios”, threatening to unlock vast amounts of the powerful greenhouse gas methane.
“It is plain to me that we have no time to lose,” Mr. Guterres said.
Keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees at the end of the century will require “rapid and far-reaching transitions” in how we manage land, energy, industry, buildings, transport and cities, he stressed. “That is why I am convening the Climate Action Summit in September.”
The Abu Dhabi meeting, which is in preparation for the September Summit, aims to take stock of progress across all the areas that the Summit is looking to promote, from industrial transition to nature-based solutions to climate finance for both mitigation and adaptation.
