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What was the outcome of the recent climate summit in New York?
What was the outcome of the recent climate summit in New York?
Social Good
Government leaders to deliver national action & ambition announcements at UN Climate Summit
The Climate Summit in New York in September was going to draw a lot of public and media attention, taking into account that at the last climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009 governments failed to come with any law-binding resolutions or agreements on global warming.
Summit was convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and attended by 125 heads of the state, making it the world’s largest leaders’ climate gathering ever. The meeting was also as much about business as politics, with 800 leaders from businesses and financial institutions taking part and making ambitious pledges. Companies now sense the need to act not only by being pushed by people and governments to show initiative, but also by their investors, who want to avoid making their businesses unpopular in PR terms.
This summit being the biggest, with array of luminaries, financial institutions, corporations and world leaders making bold statements and promising big changes, has it delivered to its expectations? What were the main outcomes?
- Firstly, leaders acknowledged the fact that the climate change is a major issue, which needs to be addressed and actions should be taken immediately. With that in mind, leaders committed to prepare and finalise new international agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) in Paris in December 2015, with the first draft to be ready for the climate conference in Lima in December 2014.
- New York Declaration on Forests was another significant result of the Summit, signed by governments, non-profit organisations and over 40 companies, including many corporate giants such as Asia Pulp and Paper, Kelloggs, Nestle. This declaration reveals ambitious plans to cut the rate of deforestation in half by 2020 and eventually end it by 2030 and restore millions of acres of degraded land. If works, it could save up between 4.5 to 8 billions tonnes of carbon dioxide emission per year, equivalent of taking all the world’s cars off the road.
- Governments and financial institutions also recognised the need for western economies to help developing countries to establish green technologies, via creating a Green Climate Fund (GCF), with France making the biggest donation of 1 billion dollars. However, a number of other countries and banks made pledge to invest into GCF to help to establish green technologies and new climate activities. The ultimate goal is for the Fund to achieve 15 billion dollars mark, which it hopes to reach by the end of the year.
- In this UN summit, businesses for the first time, showed the real commitment. There were over 100 CEOs present at the summit. More then 1000 companies pledged to put a price on carbon pollution, with 25 companies, including Nestle and Phillips promising to increase investments that reduce their own emissions and reporting back on progress. IKEA made an ambitious pledge, to source all their power from clean energy.
To sum up, this summit was the largest ever gathering of governments and businesses, making ambitions pledges to reduce emissions and invest in greener technologies. These pledges are impressive, and initiatives are promising.It is too early to talk about any convincing results and previous experience shows, that promises and not necessarily lead to actions. We all have to wait and see what Paris Summit brings in 2015, whether ambitious pledges would transform in ambitious actions, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
What was the outcome of the recent climate summit in New York?
Social Good
Government leaders to deliver national action & ambition announcements at UN Climate Summit
The Climate Summit in New York in September was going to draw a lot of public and media attention, taking into account that at the last climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009 governments failed to come with any law-binding resolutions or agreements on global warming.
Summit was convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and attended by 125 heads of the state, making it the world’s largest leaders’ climate gathering ever. The meeting was also as much about business as politics, with 800 leaders from businesses and financial institutions taking part and making ambitious pledges. Companies now sense the need to act not only by being pushed by people and governments to show initiative, but also by their investors, who want to avoid making their businesses unpopular in PR terms.
This summit being the biggest, with array of luminaries, financial institutions, corporations and world leaders making bold statements and promising big changes, has it delivered to its expectations? What were the main outcomes?
- Firstly, leaders acknowledged the fact that the climate change is a major issue, which needs to be addressed and actions should be taken immediately. With that in mind, leaders committed to prepare and finalise new international agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) in Paris in December 2015, with the first draft to be ready for the climate conference in Lima in December 2014.
- New York Declaration on Forests was another significant result of the Summit, signed by governments, non-profit organisations and over 40 companies, including many corporate giants such as Asia Pulp and Paper, Kelloggs, Nestle. This declaration reveals ambitious plans to cut the rate of deforestation in half by 2020 and eventually end it by 2030 and restore millions of acres of degraded land. If works, it could save up between 4.5 to 8 billions tonnes of carbon dioxide emission per year, equivalent of taking all the world’s cars off the road.
- Governments and financial institutions also recognised the need for western economies to help developing countries to establish green technologies, via creating a Green Climate Fund (GCF), with France making the biggest donation of 1 billion dollars. However, a number of other countries and banks made pledge to invest into GCF to help to establish green technologies and new climate activities. The ultimate goal is for the Fund to achieve 15 billion dollars mark, which it hopes to reach by the end of the year.
- In this UN summit, businesses for the first time, showed the real commitment. There were over 100 CEOs present at the summit. More then 1000 companies pledged to put a price on carbon pollution, with 25 companies, including Nestle and Phillips promising to increase investments that reduce their own emissions and reporting back on progress. IKEA made an ambitious pledge, to source all their power from clean energy.
To sum up, this summit was the largest ever gathering of governments and businesses, making ambitions pledges to reduce emissions and invest in greener technologies. These pledges are impressive, and initiatives are promising.It is too early to talk about any convincing results and previous experience shows, that promises and not necessarily lead to actions. We all have to wait and see what Paris Summit brings in 2015, whether ambitious pledges would transform in ambitious actions, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
