By Valerie Volcovici and Simon Jessop
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Developing nations on Monday pleaded at the U.N. General Assembly for the world’s richest to do more to help them cope with the hardships they face from climate extremes.
Leaders of small island states most at risk from rising sea levels said it was time for those countries that burn most of the fossil fuels blamed for rising temperatiures to stop paying “lip service” to the issue.
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“I wonder if our countries are moving further and further away from the unity and the moral fortitude we require to protect our people,” said Samoan Natural Resources and Environment Minister Cedric Schuster, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
The island nations of AOSIS have gained a powerful voice in global climate talks. During a news conference on Monday, Schuster called out the world’s biggest economies in the Group of 20, which together account for more than 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“We need all countries, but particularly the G20, to lead the way” on emissions cuts and climate finance, Schuster told reporters. “The vulnerable people of our world are drained by the lip service.”
Delivering a similar message on behalf of the Least Developed Country negotiating bloc, Malawi’s climate and natural resources minister, Yusuf Mkungula, said: “Industrialized countries must lead the way.”
The pleas underscore the widening disparity between the nations contributing most to global warming and those suffering its worst effects, demonstrating how climate change has become not just an environmental issue, but a matter of global justice.
Some country leaders spoke during a special U.N. “Summit for the Future,” while others addressed reporters and panels at one of the 900 or so climate-themed events being held this week across New York City.
Separately, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warned that humanity has now damaged at least six of the planet’s natural systems including the climate equilibrium, with a seventh – the ocean’s chemistry – now threatened by acidification, which occurs as the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the air.
“Climate events are coming at us faster and more frequent,” said Bahamas Prime Minister Phillip Davis told Reuters, adding that he was pleading with wealthy nations to “stay focused” on the problem.
So far, he said, “the signals being sent [by countries] do not match the commitments that were made.”
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Earlier on Monday, executives from major companies including massive energy-user Amazon.com and power producers like Vestas and Iberdrola urged world leaders to follow through on an agreement made at last year’s COP28 summit to triple renewable-energy capacity by 2030.
Elsewhere, 50 U.S. banks announced plans to cooperate on accelerating investment in clean energy, while a separate group of 14 banks including Citi and Bank of America called for a tripling of nuclear energy capacity globally.
But new research by Moody’s Ratings agency warned that, overall, global climate investments were trillions of dollars short of what was needed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and to adapt to climate impacts. It said that while these investments would lead to higher debts for national governments, not investing would prove far more costly.
Another analysis looking at a more local level suggested that more than 40% of the world’s major companies, cities and regions still had no plans or targets for cutting climate-warming emissions.
According to the Net Zero Tracker, a research coalition based at the University of Oxford, the “commitment gap” was the result of the climate issue competing for government attention with other challenges like war, elections and or economic trouble.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Simon Jessop in New York; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Katy Daigle and Stephen Coates)
