KATOWICE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd December, 2018) The world is not making a sufficient effort to prevent environmental catastrophe, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Monday.
"Even as we witness devastating climate impacts causing havoc across the world, we are still not doing enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption ... We need more action and more ambition ... If we fail, the Arctic and Antarctic will continue to melt, corals will bleach and then die, the oceans will rise, more people will die from air pollution, water scarcity will plague a significant proportion of humanity, and the cost of disasters will skyrocket," Guterres said at the opening of the 24th conference of the parties to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24).
According to the UN secretary general, the world needs "a complete transformation of our global energy economy." He stressed that the countries of the world should take the path of low-carbon economy.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference � COP24 � started in the Polish city of Katowice on Sunday, with around 30,000 participants gathering for the major environmental event. The main goal of the conference participants is to discuss the ways to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement. The event, which is attended by world leaders, heads of government, ministers and celebrities, is set to last until December 14.
The Climate Change Conference is held annually in the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 197 countries who have ratified the UN convention on climate change are called the Parties to the Convention. As part of the annual conference, the countries' representatives participate in the Conference of the Parties.
The Paris Agreement, created within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, went into force on November 4, 2016. It has been ratified by 184 of the 197 parties to the accord. The deal aims at keeping the increase in average global temperature at below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
