Over 100 countries announce new national climate action plans at high-level summit

NEW YORK, Sept 25 (WAM/APP) : Leaders from more than 100 countries announced or reiterated new national climate action plans during a meeting on Wednesday as part of the high-level week of the UN General Assembly.
The game-changing summit was convened by Secretary-General António Guterres alongside President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva of Brazil, host of the COP30 conference, which kicks off in November in the Amazonian city of Belém.
“Now, we need new plans for 2035 that go much further, and much faster,” Guterres said. “Delivering dramatic emissions cuts aligned with 1.5 degrees; covering all emissions and sectors; and accelerating a just energy transition globally.”
He outlined five crucial areas for action: accelerating the transition to clean energy, drastically cutting methane gas emissions, forest conservation, cutting emissions from heavy industry, and ensuring climate justice for developing nations.
At the outset, leading climate scientists Johan Rockström and Katharine Hayhoe provided a stark assessment of global efforts so far to honour the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 treaty that seeks to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Yet it is still possible to meet the 1.5-degree goal, and the two experts highlighted solutions, including transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy sources and transforming food systems to eliminate waste.
Under the Paris Agreement, governments are required to submit climate plans called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) laying out bold action for the next decade.
For its part, Brazil has committed to reducing all greenhouse gas emissions between 59 percent and 67 percent, covering all sectors of the economy, and continues efforts to end deforestation by 2030.
At the meeting, President Xi Jinping of China announced that by 2035, the country will reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by seven to 10 percent from peak levels.
The country will also increase the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to over 30 percent, expand wind and solar power capacity sixfold compared to 2020 levels, and make “new energy vehicles” the mainstream in new vehicle sales, he said in a video message.
Meanwhile, “the clean transition is moving on” in the European Union, where emissions are down nearly 40 percent since 1990, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
European countries are also “doubling down on global partnerships” and will remain the world’s largest providers of climate finance, she said, while also mobilising up to 300 billion Euros to support the clean energy transition worldwide.
For Belize, Prime Minister Johnny Briceño said the country’s new NDC covers concrete actions, such as expanding renewable electricity generation to cover 80 percent of domestic needs by 2035, restoring some 25,000 hectares of degraded forest, and planting a million trees over the next three years.