The world is facing “a grave climate emergency”, Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres said during the Abu Dhabi Climate Meeting on Sunday.
The UN chief warned that it is “outpacing our efforts to address it” with each week bringing “new climate-related devastation.”
“All around the world, people are losing their homes and being forced to migrate”, he said while highlighting the consequences of climate change, stressing that the situation “will only get worse unless we act now with ambition and urgency”.
Just last week, reports surfaced that “Himalayan glaciers are melting at double the rate since the turn of this century."
Also, he added that the “Arctic permafrost is melting decades earlier than even worst-case scenarios”, threatening to unlock vast amounts of the powerful greenhouse gas methane.
Even more worrying, he continued, “is that many countries are not even keeping pace with their promises under the Paris Agreement.”
Keeping global warming at the required degrees at the end of the century will require “rapid and far-reaching transitions” in how we manage land, energy, industry, buildings, transport and cities, he stressed.
“That is why I am convening the Climate Action Summit in September.”
The Abu Dhabi meeting, which is in preparation for the September Summit, aims to take stock of progress across all the areas that the Summit is looking to promote.
“The Climate Action Summit is an opportunity for political, business and civil society leaders to set an example”, Guterres was quoted as saying.
“And here in Abu Dhabi, we are pointing the right direction,” he added.
