At the United Nations General Assembly, the climate is making its mark – archyworldys

A few weeks before the start of the COP26 conference in Glasgow (Scotland), the theme of climate change is invited to the United Nations (UN) platform, on the occasion of the organization’s General Assembly, which is being held in New York for a week.

US President Joe Biden announced Tuesday, September 21, that the United States would “Double” their help to developing countries to face the climate crisis, a commitment of about 11 billion dollars (9.4 billion euros) per year, according to experts. Announcements have also come from Turkey and China to promote the climate transition.

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• Beijing to stop building overseas coal plants

Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to stop building coal-fired power plants abroad to fight global warming.

“China will strengthen its support to other developing countries, to promote green and low-carbon energies, and will not build new coal-fired power stations abroad”, he said in a pre-recorded video speech, responding to requests from several environmental organizations.

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This is a “Historic turning point to move away from the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel”, responded in a statement Helen Mountford of the World Resources Institute. This organization recalls that during “The last decade”, China has invested “Billions of dollars” in coal factories in other countries. This is for example the case in Indonesia, Vietnam or Bangladesh, within the framework of “New silk roads” – a gigantic infrastructure program launched by President Xi Jinping.

NGOs had called on Beijing to stop funding such projects abroad, and the US climate envoy, John Kerry, went further during a visit to China in early September, saying that the continued construction of coal-fired power plants in the Asian country risked undoing global efforts to tackle climate change. He said he asked Chinese officials to stop these constructions “So as not to ruin the world’s ability to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050”.

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President Xi also reaffirmed Chinese commitments: carbon neutrality “Before 2060” and a peak in emissions for “Before 2030”.

• Turkey to ratify Paris agreement

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Tuesday that his country would ratify the Paris agreement to fight climate change in October.

“We intend to present the Paris climate agreement to Parliament for ratification next month (…) before the United Nations climate change conference ” which will take place in Glasgow in November, said President Erdogan.

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The Turkish head of state recalled that his country had signed the Paris Agreement but had not ratified it so far, “Because of the injustices linked to the distribution of obligations and the sharing of the burden”, in terms of reducing polluting emissions.

Turkey, which signed the agreement in April 2016, considers that efforts must be differentiated between industrialized countries, a category to which it belongs. The country was severely tested, like several others in the Mediterranean basin, this summer by fires forests, then sudden floods, which claimed a hundred victims and caused extensive damage to nature. It also experiences a persistent drought.

The Paris agreement, signed at COP21 in 2015, called for limiting global warming to less than 2 ° C above the pre-industrial level, and ideally 1.5 ° C.

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But on the basis of the current commitments of the member states of the agreement, “The world is on the catastrophic path of 2.7 ° C”, recently warned the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who recalled that “If we do not change course collectively, there is a great risk of failure of the COP26” in Glasgow.

The World with AFP