Credit: Gary Raynaldo /   Luis Alfonso de Alba, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2019 Climate Summit 

By Gary Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC   TIMES

UNITED NATIONS  –   UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling on all world leaders to come to New York on 23 September for the 2019 Climate Action Summit.  To boost ambition and accelerate actions to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, UN Secretary-General Guterres will host the 2019 Climate Action Summit at the world headquarters in New York City to meet the climate challenge. According to the UN, the Summit will showcase a leap in collective national political ambition and it will demonstrate massive movements in the real economy in support of the agenda.  Global emissions are reaching record levels and show no sign of peaking. The last four years were the four hottest on record, and winter temperatures in the Arctic have risen by 3°C since 1990. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, and we are starting to see the life-threatening impact of climate change on health, through air pollution, heatwaves and risks to food security.  Named the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2019 Climate Change Summit, Luis Alfonso de Alba is working to ensure that the world has the tools, the vision and the political will necessary to move forward on ambitious climate action for the benefit of all aspects of society.  Ambassador de Alba addressed reporters at a press conference Tuesday at the UN in New York to give an update on the upcoming 2019 Climate Action Summit.

‘We have engaged with a number of countries and a number of other states holders, private sector included, civil society organizations in preparing for this summit on the assumption we need to raise ambition quite considerably. We received scientific information on the gravity of the situation and therefore the need to scale up ambition is quite important. That is the main objective of the summit. But to raise ambition without a linkage to action will not serve the purpose.  We have engaged with a number of actors that will be in a position to help us raising ambition and translating that ambition into action.”

-Ambassador  Luis Alfonso de Alba. 

Diplomatic Times /  28 May 2019 –  Press Conference by Luis Alfonso de Alba, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2019 Climate Summit

“A summit that will not be just an occasion for a few speeches to be delivered. But basically a meeting that all participants will come with a plan. A plan that will identify the action that can be taken in the medium and the long term time frame, “ Ambassador de Alba stated.

In the past de Alba stated:  “We will need a lot of political will to address the challenges that we confront, but what we are doing today, what we committed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement, is simply not enough to reach the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C”.

The Secretary-General’s Summit – meant to take place on 23 September during the UN General Assembly’s high-level week – will bring together heads of State and Government, ministers, leaders of private sector initiatives, and non-profit organisations, for a discussion about concrete action and raised ambition.