By Bisola Adeyemo
United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres has said that there should be commitments and plans to combat climate change without wasting much time.
The UN chief called for the commitments at the joint hybrid news conference with the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organisation, Petteri Taalas, to launch the State of the Global Climate in 2020 Report.
“We must agree to a common direction of travel.
“The United Nations is building a global coalition committed to net zero emissions — to cover all countries, cities, regions, businesses, and financial institutions.” said the top UN official.
He stressed that the next 10 years “need to be a decade of transformation.
“Countries need to submit ambitious new NDCs – the nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement — which are their climate plans for the next 10 years.
“We need those commitments and plans to be backed up with concrete immediate action.”
Referring to the report, Guterres said that “it needs to be read by all leaders and decision-makers in the world” as this report shows that 2020 “was also another unprecedented year of extreme weather and climate disasters.”
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He said the cause was clear because climate disruption “is caused by human activities, human decisions, and human folly. The effects are disastrous.”
He added that 2020 was 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times.
“We are getting dangerously close to the 1.5 degree Celsius limit set by the scientific community,” he warned, adding: “We are on the verge of the abyss.
“The six years since 2015 have been the hottest on record.”
The Paris Agreement on climate change promised to limit temperature rise to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.environews reports
On specific data, Guterres said that concentrations of the major greenhouse gases continued to climb. Carbon dioxide concentrations rose to a new high – 410.5 parts per million, which is a 148 percent increase above pre-industrial levels.
The number of tropical cyclones globally was above average in 2020.
There were 98 named tropical storms, said the secretary-general.
“This was mostly driven by high activity in the North Atlantic, which had more than double the long-term average,” he said.
