​Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

On the first day of COP28, the Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate talks in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tion said it was vir­tu­al­ly cer­tain that 2023 will be the warmest year on record”.

It added that for the first time, green­house gas con­cen­tra­tions had reached 50 per cent above pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els.

T&T has al­so felt the ex­treme heat this year.

While da­ta re­mains pre­lim­i­nary, 2023 has had the most “hot days” since 1980, where max­i­mum high tem­per­a­tures ex­ceed­ed 34°C at Pi­ar­co and 32°C at Crown Point.

Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res, at the open­ing of the World Cli­mate Sum­mit of COP28, ex­plained that this un­prece­dent­ed lev­el of warm­ing has led to crises around the world, and called once again for glob­al lead­ers to act.

“Po­lar ice and glac­i­ers are van­ish­ing be­fore our eyes, caus­ing hav­oc the world over—from land­slides and floods to ris­ing seas. But this is just one symp­tom of the sick­ness bring­ing our cli­mate to its knees. A sick­ness on­ly you, glob­al lead­ers, can cure,” he said.

Guter­res added, “Earth’s vi­tal signs are fail­ing: record emis­sions, fe­ro­cious fires, dead­ly droughts and the hottest year ever. We are miles from the goals of the Paris Agree­ment—and min­utes to mid­night for the 1.5°C lim­it.”

He said that if the world acts now, coun­tries have the tech­nolo­gies to avoid the worst of cli­mate chaos. Guter­res called on the G20, rep­re­sent­ing 80 per cent of the world’s emis­sions, to lead.

The UN head said the globe needs to cut emis­sions by dras­ti­cal­ly phas­ing out fos­sil fu­el use and en­sur­ing this tran­si­tion is just.

Guter­res ex­plained, “De­vel­op­ing coun­tries are be­ing dev­as­tat­ed by dis­as­ters they did not cause. Ex­tor­tion­ate bor­row­ing costs are block­ing their cli­mate ac­tion plans, and sup­port is far too lit­tle and far too late. The Glob­al Stock­take must com­mit to a surge in fi­nance, in­clud­ing for adap­ta­tion and loss and dam­age. And it must sup­port re­form of the mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment banks to lever­age far more pri­vate fi­nance at rea­son­able costs.”

The Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change, Si­mon Stiell, spelt out his vi­sion for the next two years at the open­ing of COP28, say­ing, “In 2024, coun­tries will sub­mit their first Bi­en­ni­al Trans­paren­cy Re­port. This will mean the re­al­i­ty of in­di­vid­ual progress can’t be con­cealed. We will al­so agree at COP29 on how to fi­nance this mas­sive shift with the new fi­nance goal.”

Stiell al­so put coun­tries on no­tice that new Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions, which are goals each na­tion has to de­vel­op to curb green­house gas emis­sions, must be de­liv­ered by ear­ly 2025.

Cit­ing cli­mate sci­ence, which, ac­cord­ing to Stiell, says “we have around six years be­fore we ex­haust the plan­et’s abil­i­ty to cope with our emis­sions” by COP30, he said “every sin­gle com­mit­ment—on fi­nance, adap­ta­tion, and mit­i­ga­tion—has to be in line with a 1.5°C world.”

This sto­ry was pub­lished with the sup­port of Cli­mate Track­er through the COP28 Cli­mate Jus­tice Re­port­ing Fel­low­ship.