When greater than two dozen world leaders deliver remarks on the United Nations’ annual climate conference on Wednesday, many are prone to detail their nations’ firsthand experience with the catastrophic weather that has include climate change.
That could include Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose nation has seen deadly flooding this yr from monsoon rains that scientists say have turn into heavier with climate change. Just two years ago, greater than 1,700 people died in widespread flooding. Pakistan has also suffered from dangerous heat, with hundreds of individuals hospitalized with heatstroke this spring as temperatures soared to 47 degrees Celsius (117 Fahrenheit).
Also on the list of speakers Wednesday is Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Edward Davis. Like many other countries within the Global South, the Bahamas has piled up debt from warming-connected weather disasters it did little to cause, including Hurricanes Dorian in 2019 and Matthew in 2016. Leaders have been looking for help and money from the Global North and oil firms.
Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis can also be on the list. Along with the remainder of southern Europe, his nation this summer was hammered by successive heat waves after three years of below-average rainfall. In Greece, the misery included water shortages, dried-up lakes and the death of untamed horses.
Leaders from Italy, Tuvalu, Russia, Morocco, Congo, and the secretary of state of the Holy See — the federal government of the Catholic Church — are amongst others scheduled to talk.
Plenty of massive names and powerful countries are noticeably absent from COP29 this yr. That includes the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries — a bunch liable for greater than than 70% of the heat-trapping gases emitted last yr — were missing. The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — didn’t send their No. 1s. Neither did India and Indonesia.
But U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was there, and he announced an 81% emissions reduction goal on 1990 levels by 2035, in keeping with the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That’s up from the 78% the U.K. had already pledged.
The important focus of this yr’s talks is climate finance — wealthier nations compensating poor countries for damages from climate change’s weather extremes, helping them pay to transition their economies away from fossil fuels and helping them with adaptation.
Wednesday’s agenda also includes an update on the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an idea modeled on predecessor treaty movements that sought to construct international support for controls on nuclear weapons, plastic pollution and chemical weapons. Supporters say the treaty could help stop the expansion of climate-causing fossil fuel production, create a plan to fairly phase out oil, gas and coal and speed up the transition to renewable energy.
The idea has been endorsed by countries and groups including Fiji, Colombia, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, Indigenous nations in Peru, the World Health Organization and the European Parliament.
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Associated Press writers Dorany Pineda in Los Angeles and Jill Lawless in London contributed.
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