UN Climate Action Summit: A Carbon-Neutral World

UN Climate Action Summit 2019, which aims to mobilize all countries around the world to realise the transition to a carbon-neutral world and seek more countries to join the more ambitious commitments of emissions-reduction, entered its final day on Friday. The 197 contracting parties to the Paris Agreement decided to extend the talks for another year, with little progress in technical talks on how to control emissions cuts through carbon markets, a goal sought by the parties.

The technical negotiations on how to regulate carbon markets to curb emissions cuts by states parties have moved slowly till Friday, the last day of the two-week United Nations climate conference. Although more than 80 parties to the Paris Agreement have pledged to propose more ambitious emissions targets by 2020 during the climate conference, the big polluters have not made further commitments, thus the 197 parties have decided to extend negotiations on the technical details for another year.

There exist several positive aspects of the climate conference that China pledged to stop financing coal construction in Africa, and the EU introduced the green deal to reduce tariffs on green product imports.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of UN have emphasized the great opportunity of climate action to the society on the Summit, appealing to a low-carbon green economic transition and create more new jobs, as well as seeking enormous welfare by entering carbon neutral world to ensure invulnerable conditions of work and life without damaging our health or the environment.

He also stressed that the transition to a low-carbon future must be fair and inclusive, that all countries must make commitments and that businesses need to take the lead.