UN secretary-general’s ambitious climate protection call met with quiet response

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BERLIN (AFP) At the climate conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday, government officials muted the UN secretary-general’s call for countries to show more ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday urged rich countries to advance their goals of achieving net-zero emissions as close to 2040 as possible, while emerging economies aim for a date as close to 2050 as possible. urged to This will be a significant change from his post in goal.
The United States and the European Union are currently targeting net zero by 2050, while China has set his 2060 target and India has his 2070 target.

Guterres’ call was made in a video message in response to a new report from the United Nations’ top climate science body. The report found that the world is still far from the road in estimating global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2,7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times. , as agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement. He did not attend the Copenhagen conference. At the end of a two-day meeting of senior officials from dozens of countries in the Danish capital, Egypt’s foreign minister said there was no “concrete answer to the ambitious targets set by Guterres.”

Sameh Shoukry, who chaired the United Nations Climate Change Conference in his country last year, said: “We are confident that these goals will be addressed in a national context and within national possibilities.

Shoukri said Egypt must rely on technology transfer “from friends and partners” to reduce fossil fuels and increase its use of renewable energy. The country has already benefited from many deals and investments to green the economy in recent years.

Denmark’s climate minister Dan Jorgensen recently said the country has accelerated its net-zero target to 2045 and aims to capture more carbon by 2050 than it emits. Denmark has a target of net zero by 2045, and neighbor Germany has also indicated its intention to reach that target by 2035, putting Denmark well ahead of most developed countries.

The Copenhagen conference is he one of several ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates later this year.

Asked whether negotiations could be resumed at that summit on a global commitment to phase out all fossil fuels, Jorgensen said it was “no doubt” that it would be discussed.


“Whether we can achieve that result in Dubai later this year, it is hard to say,” he said. “But I think it’s safe to say it becomes part of the conversation.”

Other key issues to be resolved in the coming months include increasing funding for poor countries, including those already affected by global warming, and reaching the signing of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. It includes an assessment of what has happened internationally since then.