Outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he was “confident that, by the time I leave office, the Paris Agreement will have entered into force”, adding that there was a “diverse group” of world leaders that were committed to ratifying and carrying out the agreement.
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At a UN General Assembly meeting in NY this morning, 31 nations officially signed onto the accord, making it very likely that the deal will enter legal force this year.
Brazil, Morocco and Bangladesh were among a tranche of nations to submit their documents at a special event hosted by Ban Ki-moon at UN headquarters in NY on Wednesday.
Analysis: So the Paris climate deal enters into force – then what? “I am confident by the time I leave office (on December 31), the Paris agreement will have entered into force”.
The countries that joined the accord on Wednesday included Latin American powerhouses Argentina, Brazil and Mexico as well as major fossil fuel powers Brunei and the United Arab Emirates.
60 countries accounting for nearly 48% of global greenhouse gas emissions have now joined the Agreement, short of the 55 countries representing 55% of emissions required for the treaty to enter into force.
Last December, almost 200 nations agreed to slash greenhouse gases in order to keep global temperature rises to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. “Late ratification would seriously be putting the EU’s reputation as a climate leader at risk”, said Ms Melissa Low, a research associate from the Energy Studies Institute at National University of Singapore. “We need the funds, the capacity, the programmes, the plans and the authority to immediately implement and scale-up efforts to combat climate change, and we need to see country climate pledges scaled-up”. 31 more countries have formally joined the agreement.
President Michel Temer presented to the UNs secretary-general the document whereby the country ratifies the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Adriano Campolina, chief executive of the charity ActionAid, was puzzled why the European Union – the champions of the earlier Kyoto Protocol – had not moved earlier.
The Prime Minister told the gathering of world leaders in NY that the United Kingdom remained a “confident, strong and dependable partner internationally”.
In early September, the world’s two largest emitters, China and the United States, joined the Agreement.
Salaheddine Mezouar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation will be on hand for a series of side-events and bilateral meetings aimed to reinforce and promote Morocco’s climate initiatives including those on energy, agriculture, capacity building, adaptation and finance, to discuss global warming issues affecting the most vulnerable countries and island states, and to mobilize the worldwide community for an ambitious global climate action agenda in Marrakech to implement the Paris Agreement.
The United Nations and sane people everywhere are in a genuine state of panic that Donald Trump could derail the Paris climate change agreement if elected to the presidency.
“The EU might still be able to be part of history in the making if they endorse a fast-track ratification process and not have to wait for all 28 member states to complete their domestic process in order to commit to the deal. This is testament to the urgency of the crisis we all face”, he said.
President Obama, who used his last address as president at the U.N. General Assembly to call for “bold” action on climate change, just tweeted this powerful new video.
“The Earth assails us with rising seas, record heat and extreme storms”, Ban said.
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Theres a push within the European Union to get them to be the ones that help bring this thing into force, Hanafi said.
