The One Planet Summit is a positive move in the right direction. But governments must step up with faster and more ambitious climate action.
Paris - The One Planet Summit saw the emergence of many positive initiatives namely the World Bank committing to stop financing oil and gas exploration and extraction projects by 2019 and AXA insurance halting all new coal and oil sands development and announcing 12 billion Euros of green investment by 2020. While they are positive steps in the right direction, these pledges are not enough to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the needs of vulnerable communities to adapt to climate change and deal with the damages and losses caused by its impacts. We know from the 2017 United Nations Emissions Gap Report that we are not on track. The report tells us that we need to triple efforts, step up both private and public finance and accelerate the deployment of renewables to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and keep warming below 1.5C.
This year is probably among the five-warmest since about 150 years and brought massive hurricanes in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, devastating floods in South Asia and out of control wildfires in California. Simultaneously, 2017 might have broken the global record of man-made CO2 emissions after three years of stagnating carbon pollution, indicating that global use of fossil fuels is growing stronger than its replacement by renewables.
