Russia’s war on Ukraine remains front and center at the United Nations General Assembly, but for leaders of many of the developing nations in New York for the annual gathering, living under the threat of rising seas, stronger storms, hotter heatwaves and shifting weather patterns is what matters for the survival of their countries and people.
"I hope that in the same way we can take Ukraine seriously in the Security Council, we can take the climate crisis seriously and the financing needs for it in the Security Council,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley told a gathering of leaders from around the globe.
With the threat of climate change continuing unabated, the U.N. Development Program said on Thursday it was developing a “large-scale, collaborative push” to construct early warning systems for people living in several developing countries most vulnerable to climate disaster. Antigua and Barbuda, Cambodia, Chad, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji and Somalia will be the first countries to get the warning systems.
Lives are at stake
Nations like Mottley's small Caribbean island produce little of the carbon pollution that causes climate change, but they disproportionally bear the brunt of its devastation.
“This is as much a threat. In fact, it is a greater threat because more lives are at stake globally than are at stake in Ukraine,” Mottley said.
The world’s biggest polluters were either no-shows or relegated to the sidelines for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s Climate Ambition Summit, held on Wednesday as the assembly's annual gathering of world leaders got underway.
Guterres says nations are so far off-track from their Paris treaty obligations to hold warming to no more than 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, or preferably 1.5°, that the world is headed to between 2.6° to 2.8° of warming this century.
There's "still time" to get back to 1.5°, he says, but a lot must be done quickly to phase out fossil fuels, invest in green energy, and transform business and society.
Speakers included leaders from countries most impacted by human-caused climate change. The summit was aimed at addressing their anger and frustration with wealthy nations that have poured untold millions of dollars into the war in Ukraine while failing to make good on promised aid to combat climate change.
Many of these developing nations are already struggling with crushing debts, onerous interest rates, soaring inflation and higher prices for grains, fuel and other basic commodities.
'Humanity has opened the gates to hell'
The climate crisis has been a theme of Guterres’ tenure as the head of the United Nations and he has repeatedly called on the major emitters of greenhouse gases — like the United States, China and India — to quickly transition their economies to clean renewables and away from fossil fuels.
“Humanity has opened the gates to hell,” Guterres told the summit. “Horrendous heat is having horrendous effects. Distraught farmers are watching crops carried away by floods. Sweltering temperatures spawning disease. And thousands fleeing in fear as historic fires rage.”
Kenya’s President William Ruto gave the first address, repeating what he said earlier in the month at his Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi: The industrialized world is responsible for climate change, and it needs to invest in Africa and help the continent avoid the mistakes of rich countries.
Africa can "leapfrog into a fully green industrial paradigm," he said. "Yet we cannot and must not do this on our own."
Tuvalu's Prime Minister Kausea Natano, whose tiny island nation in the Pacific faces an acute threat from rising sea levels, said “the longer we remain addicted to fossil fuels, the longer we commit ourselves to mutual decline.”
Poor nations have 'every right to be angry'
Seychelles President Wavel Ramkalawan, whose Indian Ocean island nation also faces great risk, urged wealthy nations to increase financing to take on climate change. Mitigating the effects of global warming is “no longer an option," he said.
This week’s climate summit is a lead-up to the U.N.’s major annual climate conference, or COP28, as it is known, which is scheduled to begin in late November. It is being hosted by the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s richest petroleum-producing nations.
Expectations are dampened for the UAE-hosted summit in part because the head of the country’s oil company will play host. Guterres is pushing for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, which, he said, reached an "incredible" US$7 trillion last year.
“Many of the poorest nations have every right to be angry,” said Guterres. “Angry that they are suffering most from a climate crisis they did nothing to create. Angry that promised finance has not materialized. And angry that their borrowing costs are sky-high. We need a transformation to rebuild trust."
