The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres hosted the Climate Action Summit in New York ahead of the UN General Assembly. The Secretary-General called on all leaders – governments, the private sector, civil society, local authorities and other international organizations – to come with concrete, realistic plans that will boost ambition and rapidly accelerate action to implement the Paris Agreement.
Paris Agreement provides an open-door framework for countries to continuously ratchet up their positive actions, and the Summit demonstrated how governments, businesses, and civilians around the world are rising to the challenge.
Some of the outcomes of the Summit
REAP
Risk-informed Early Action Partnership (REAP) intended to protect a billion people in the developing world from extreme weather has been launched at the UN General Assembly in New York during the Climate Summit. REAP had four main goals: strengthening laws and policies on disaster; financing that reaches people not after disasters but when there is a forecast of disaster; early action connected to early warning; and preparedness for heatwaves.
Its secretariat will be hosted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent.
InsuResilience Global Partnership
The InsuResilience Global Partnership for Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance Solutions was launched at the 2017 UN Climate Conference in Bonn. It brings together G20 countries in partnership with the V20 nations.
The V20 is a group of 49 of the most vulnerable countries including small islands like Fiji.
At the 2019 UN climate summit, InsuResilience Global Partnership – Vision 2025 was launched. It will ensure that 500 million poor and vulnerable people worldwide will be covered against climate shocks by pre-arranged risk finance by 2025. Governments, multilateral organizations, the private sector, and civil society will come together in an unprecedented way to protect 500 million poor and vulnerable people against climate shocks and cover 10 percent of annual disaster losses through pre-arranged risk financing instruments by 2025.
Cool Coalition
The first-ever global coalition on clean and efficient cooling was launched in April, 2019, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Cooling is needed for comfort, health, keeping vaccines and food fresh, ensuring a stable energy supply, and assuring productive economies and a clean environment. As temperatures increase so does demand for cooling and the energy it requires.
As the world gets warmer, the demand for air conditioners is projected to grow and the greenhouse gas it emits will endanger the planet.
Clean, efficient cooling appliances and equipment can save up to $2.9 trillion in energy use by 2050, and help avoid 0.4° Celsius warming of the planet, said the United Nations-backed ‘Cool Coalition’ comprising 23 members.
Besides the UN, it is supported by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).
It announced action to achieve a rapid global transition to efficient and climate-friendly cooling.
Leadership Group for Industry Transition
A new initiative was launched at the UN Climate Action Summit to help guide the world’s heaviest greenhouse gas emitting industries toward the low-carbon economy.
India and Sweden together with other countries as well as a group of companies announced a new Leadership Group for Industry Transition that will drive transformation in hard-to-decarbonize and energy-intensive sectors like steel, cement, aluminum, aviation and shipping. This global initiative will be supported by the World Economic Forum and many others and is an ambitious, public-private effort, to ensure heavy industries and mobility companies can find a workable pathway to deliver on the Paris Agreement.
Climate Action for Jobs
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced a new initiative aimed at ensuring that decent job creation and protecting livelihoods are at the center of countries’ efforts to boost climate action, and urged countries to join the initiative.
The new “Climate Action for Jobs” initiative was presented at the Secretary-General’s 2019 Climate Action Summit in September.
The initiative has been developed jointly by the Climate Action Summit, together with the International Labour Organization and others.
Implementation of the initiative will be spearheaded by the ILO, with support from other partners.
The ILO is uniquely positioned to help countries pursue the double objective of the protection of the planet and the promotion of inclusive growth and decent work. ILO adopted the ‘Just Transition Framework’ and launched the ‘Green Initiative’ in 2013. Building on this foundation, the ILO issued its ‘Guidelines for a Just Transition’ in 2015, providing a set of practical tools for governments and social partners to navigate change.
United in Science Report
The world’s leading climate science organizations have joined forces to produce a landmark new report for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, stressing the glaring – and growing – gap between agreed targets to tackle global warming and the actual reality.
The report, United in Science, includes details on the state of the climate and presents trends in the emissions and atmospheric concentrations of the main greenhouse gases.
It highlights the urgency of fundamental socio-economic transformation in key sectors such as land use and energy in order to avert dangerous global temperature increase with potentially irreversible impacts.
It also examines tools to support both mitigation and adaptation.
Global Commission on Adaptation
Global Commission on Adaptation brings together leaders from politics, business, development and science to identify solutions and drive action. The Commission is led by Ban Ki-moon, Kristalina Georgieva and Bill Gates. It is comprised of more 30 Commissioners and 20 convening countries. A global network of research partners and advisors support the Commission. It is co-managed by World Resources Institute and the Global Center on Adaptation.
Climate adaptation means preparing for and responding to the disruptive effects of climate change. It means doing everything we can to protect people’s lives and livelihoods from the impacts of our changing environment, as well as creating and spreading solutions to make communities, homes, businesses, farms and infrastructure stronger and better equipped to deal with mounting challenges.
Three Percent Club
Launched at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York in September 2019, the Three Percent Club builds on International Energy Agency (IEA) research showing that the right efficiency policies could deliver over 40 per cent of the emissions cuts needed to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, without requiring new technology.
It is a new coalition of countries, businesses and international organizations and is committed to driving a three percent global increase in energy efficiency each year – a move that can help limit climate change and increase global prosperity.
India is an associate member of International Energy Agency (IEA) which is Paris-headquartered.
Energy Efficiency Global Alliance (EEGA)
Our most critical global challenge is stemming climate change while still enabling global economic development.
There is wide recognition that we cannot achieve global climate goals without significantly scaling up energy efficiency. And efficiency investments improve countries’ energy productivity, resulting in multiple additional benefits, enabling them to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, grow their economies, improve public health and ensure energy security.
The Energy Efficiency Global Alliance (EEGA), an international coalition of government, corporate, and NGO leaders that champions faster and deeper implementation of energy efficiency solutions to meet global energy and climate goals, helps meet this need by uniting the stakeholders. The EEGA coordinates the efforts of global EE companies, officials, and initiatives to increase recognition of efficiency’s critical role as a climate solution and facilitate its rapid deployment.
CIP
A new investment platform that aims to increase the flow of capital in developing countries to meet climate ambitions has been during the UN Climate Summit in September.
The Climate Investment Platform (CIP) which is a partnership of key institutions in the energy sector, seeks to welcome stakeholders from governments and international organisations to the private sector to scale-up climate action and translate national climate targets into concrete investments on the ground.
In response to country needs to mobilize low-carbon, climate-resilient investments, CIP will aim to increase the flow of capital in developing countries to meet climate ambitions.
With energy accounting for two thirds of total greenhouse gas emissions, the platform’s first service line is dedicated to the global transition to clean energy. Other service lines, such as adaptation, land use, cities and infrastructure will be launched in the first quarter of 2020. Progress will be presented at UNFCCC COP 25 in December 2019 in Chile.