National leaders addressed the group after adopting a “Pact for the Future” aimed at ensuring and increasing cooperation between nations, with many calling for urgent access to more climate finance.
“International challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them,” Guterres told leaders at the summit. “Crises are interacting and feeding off each other – for example, as digital technologies spread climate disinformation, that deepens distrust and fuels polarization.”
Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados echoed Guterres’ warning and urged a “reset” in how global institutions are governed so they can better respond to crises and serve those most in need.
“The distress in our institutions of governance, the mistrust between the governors and the governed, will continue to foster social alienation the world over at the very time that we need to find as many people as possible to shape a new world,” Mottley said.
Activists cross the Brooklyn Bridge during a Youth Global Climate demonstration ahead of the UN Climate week and General Assembly in New York City on September 20, 2024. (AFP)
The UN climate summit continues on Monday with speeches from China, India, and the United States.
Elsewhere during the week, US President Joe Biden is expected to deliver a speech at an event also attended by actress and climate activist Jane Fonda and World Bank President Ajay Banga, among others. Another event hosted by the Clinton Foundation features speeches by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and actor and water activist Matt Damon.
Climate summits and events like Climate Week, held alongside the UN General Assembly, have taken on a more urgent tone in recent years as rising temperatures fuel increasingly extreme disasters like heatwaves and storms.
Some observers to climate negotiations regretted that the global pact adopted Sunday morning by the General Assembly did not go further than last year’s COP28 summit in Dubai in affirming a commitment to transition away from fossil fuel use.
Countries are showing “collective amnesia” about the need to tackle these polluting fuels, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate think tank E3G.
Activists cross the Brooklyn Bridge during a Youth Global Climate demonstration ahead of the UN Climate week and General Assembly in New York City on September 20, 2024. (AFP)
Leaders have also been grappling with a more urgent challenge on the climate agenda. There are just two months left until the UN’s COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, leaving little time for agreeing on a new global finance target to replace the annual $100 billion pledge that expires in 2025.
With some UN agencies estimating the annual financing need in the trillions, leaders are looking beyond their own budgets for ways to boost climate cash.
The World Bank and other multilateral development banks are undergoing reform processes this year, which could see them making more funding available or taking on more climate-related risk.
Under an initiative led by Barbados, France and Kenya, countries also continue to discuss imposing new global taxes to help pay for climate finance, such as a financial transaction tax or a shipping tax.
Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland noted that some of the world’s poorest countries were now facing climate-fueled disasters along with an increased debt burden.
“We have to do more to understand the fundamental unfairness of the debt crisis that most of our developing countries are going through,” Scotland told Reuters. “The development banks and the World Bank have to step up to that reality.”
(Reporting by Simon Jessop and Valerie Volcovici; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Chris Reese and Stephen Coates)
The United Nations chief urged the world’s divided nations on Wednesday to compromise and approve a blueprint to address global challenges from conflicts and climate change to artificial intelligence and reforming the UN and global financial institutions.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters that discussions on the “Pact of the Future” are in their final stretch and failure to reach the required consensus among all 193 UN member nations “would be tragic.”
A year ago, Guterres sounded an alarm about the survival of humanity and the planet and summoned world leaders to a Summit of the Future at their global gathering this year to unite and take action to reform the UN and other institutions established after World War II and address new global threats. It is taking place Sunday and Monday, just before Tuesday’s start of the annual high-level meeting at the UN General Assembly.
Negotiations on the 30-page pact, now in its fourth revision, have been taking place for months, and in recent interviews and at Wednesday’s press conference the secretary-general has faced questions about its lack of vision, and what is different from UN documents adopted in recent years that haven’t been implemented.
“It’s very simple,” the UN chief replied.
All the previous “extraordinary, important declarations” were about what is needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century, he said. The Summit of the Future is about implementing those challenges, which requires reform of global institutions established after World War II including the United Nations.
Guterres stressed that in every area — from climate to AI — “there is a serious problem of governance,” and that’s what the Summit of the Future is about.
The draft Pact of the Future says world leaders are gathering “at a time of profound global transformation,” and it warns of “rising catastrophic and existential risks” that could tip people everywhere “into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown.”
But the draft says leaders are coming to the UN “to protect the needs and interests of present and future generations through actions in the Pact for the Future.”
It includes 51 actions on issues including eradicating poverty, combating climate change, achieving gender equality, promoting peace and protecting civilians, and reinvigorating the multilateral system to “seize the opportunities of today and tomorrow.”
Guterres pointed to “potential breakthroughs” in the pact including “the strongest language on Security Council reform in a generation,” and the most concrete steps to enlarging the powerful 15-member body since 1963.
He also cited the first measures to govern new technologies including Artificial Intelligence, a “major advance” in reforming international financial institutions, and a commitment to multiply resources for developing countries to meet UN development goals by 2030.
Urging member states to get the Pact of the Future “over the finish line,” Guterres said, “We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents.”
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters Tuesday that a priority for the Biden administration at this year’s Summit of the Future is “to create a more inclusive and effective international system.”
She said the Group of 77 which now represents 134 developing countries at the UN, the 27-member European Union and the United States all agreed to the fourth revision of the Pact of the Future.
But the US ambassador said Russia objected to about 15 different issues, Saudi Arabia had problems with the climate language, and other countries objected to the language on reforming the international financial institutions including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund..
“I do think the Summit of the Future will make a difference,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “There are still some major differences. … But I am still hopeful that we will get there.”
