COP26 President urges countries and companies to quicken climate action pace

Article summary

The Cabinet Office has published a speech delivered by the COP26 President, Alok Sharma, at the UN High Level Forum on 13 July 2022. Sharma highlighted some of the progress made since COP26 in November 2021, including 16 new and revised climate action plans agreed by countries in the form of National Determined Contributions (NDCs), over 2.5bn people covered by adaptation plans and the extensive work performed to improve access to finance. However, Sharma underlined that this progress has still been too slow and limited. He urged countries and companies to increase efforts to ensure that they have ambitious emissions targets and are actioning the climate commitments made in Glasgow. Sharma warned that if immediate action is not taken, the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees pre-industrial levels will move further away and reversing global warming will be out of reach, detrimentally impacting the lives and livelihoods of millions...