Answering the Call: UN Climate Action

My dear great-great-granddaughter,             

I wish I could be with you as you open this letter in the year 2100.  

My mind is flooded with curiosity about your life, your hopes and dreams, and what kind of world is outside your window.

But I must confess, I am fixed on one question: Will you open this letter in a spirit of happiness and gratitude—or with disappointment and anger at my generation?              

As I write you in 2023, humanity is losing the fight of our lives: the battle against climate upheaval that threatens our planet.                               

If I were with you now, you might ask if we saw disaster coming.               

Yes, we did.

~ United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, climate change apology to his future great-great-granddaughter, 20 April 2023

Climate change is a global emergency that goes beyond national borders. No single country can solve it alone. As the world’s only truly universal global organization, the United Nations is at the forefront of the effort to save our planet for future generations. 

As world leaders gather in Azerbaijan for UN Climate Change Conference (COP29), the latest UN climate change conference, here is a collection that looks at the issues at hand and what the UN is doing about it.

 

Since human-induced climate change was first recognized as a serious problem at the first World Climate Conference (WCC) in 1979, the increase in global temperatures has accelerated. This has lead to widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe and causing widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people.

An aerial view of houses in a village in Haiti drowning in the floodwaters caused by the tropical storm Hanna in 2008.
UN Photo/Marco Dormino # UN7661771

Left: Secretary-General António Guterres views Marsh Harbour from a helicopter flying over Great Abaco Island, Bahamas, witnessing first-hand the devastation left in the aftermath of category 5 Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
UN Photo/OCHA/Mark Garten # UN730658

Centre: A father carries his daughter on the shoulders as residents flee rising waters in search of shelter, after heavy rains caused by tropical storm Noel flooded their homes in Cité Soleil, Haiti, in 2007.
UN Photo/Logan Abassi # UN7686194

Right: Aftermath of the Super Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan in 2013. Two girls from Tacloban stand in front of some of the damage and debris left by the storm.
UN Photo/Evan Schneider # UN7275816

Children run from an approaching sand storm in Gao, Mali, in 2013. 
UN Photo/Marco Dormino # UN7280198

Left: Cracked Earth in Nature Reserve of Popenguine in Senegal.
UN Photo/Evan Schneider # UN7778908

Right: A woman holding her young malnourished baby queues for food at the Badbado camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). In 2011 famine was declared in two regions of southern Somalia – southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle. The United Nations indicated that 3.7 million people across the country, that’s nearly half of the Somali population, were in crisis and in urgent need of assistance. 
UN Photo/Stuart Price # UN7367066

Left: Massive ice formations at Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon in southeast Iceland in 2013. 
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe # UN7301937

Upper right: A harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) at the Elkhorn Slough Ecological Reserve, an estuary located along Monterey Bay in California, United States. Glacial ice is a refuge for seals, serving as a place to rest and to birth and nurse their young pups. 
UN Photo/Mark Garten # UN71063171

Lower right: An aerial view of Marovo Lagoon in the western province of the Solomon Islands in 2011. The Solomon Islands ranks among the top high-risk countries in the world affected by global warming. 
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe # UN7369403

Secretary-General António Guterres (seated third from right) on his way to the Base General Bernardo O'Higgins in Antarctica. The Secretary-General visited Antarctica in November 2023 to see the deadly impact of the climate crisis. While in Antarctica the Secretary-General saw the Collins and Nelson glaciers, as well as Kopaitic Island, which is home to penguins and other species impacted by climate change.
UN Photo/Mark Garten # UN71012870

Left: A wide view of the UN General Assembly Hall as Secretary-General António Guterres (on screens and at podium) opens the UN Climate Action Summit 2019. The summit was convened by the Secretary-General and aims to deliver new pathways and practical actions to shift the global response into higher gear on confronting climate change, as well as to boost ambition and accelerate action to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. 
UN Photo/Cia Pak # UN731933

Upper right: To commemorate International Environment Day, marked annually on 5 June, hundreds of Haitian students participate in a massive tree-planting campaign in a pine forest, one of Haiti’s last, located a four-hours-long drive from the capital, Port-au-Prince, in 2011. The once-great forest has been depleted for charcoal production and to make room for farm land. A young girl carries her pine seedling.
UN Photo/Logan Abassi # UN7381711

Lower right: The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) launched its “Carbon Sink” tree-planting initiative in partnership with the Government of South Sudan in 2018. The Mission’s engineering section purchased 5,000 seedlings of indigenous tree species, to be planted at both UNMISS bases and other locations in Juba, including schools, sports centres and institutions. A seedling freshly planted in the area around the Level II Hospital on the UNMISS Tomping base.
UN Photo/Nektarios Markogiannis # UN760071

Greta Thunberg, 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, sails into New York Harbour flanked by a fleet of 17 sailboats, each representing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) on their sails. She embarked on a trans-Atlantic voyage on 14 August, from Plymouth, United Kingdom, to New York City on a solar-powered, zero-emission racing boat, the Malizia II, to attend the UN Climate Action Summit at UN Headquarters in New York in September 2019.
UN Photo/Mark Garten # UN736519 & # UN736505

Left: The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) opened on 3 June 1992. At this conference the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty created to combat dangerous human interference with the climate system, was adopted by 154 states. Here, a participant at the Conference signs his name to the Earth Pledge in which he promises to act to the best of his ability to “help make the Earth a secure and hospitable home for present and future generations.” 
UN Photo/Michos Tzovaras # UN7698548 

Centre: Solar panels, a gift from India, are installed on the roof of UN Headquarters in August 2019. The panels are powered up to reach the max of 50 KW of generation power.
UN Photo/Mark Garten # UN729090

Right: United States Secretary of State John Kerry, with his grand-daughter in tow, signs the Paris Agreement on climate change on 22 April 2016 at the UN Headquarters. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015. 
UN Photo/Amanda Voisard # UN7165142 

A view from the Bransfield Strait in Antarctica. "Antarctica is geographically remote for most of us, but its future is closely linked to that of future generations," said Secretary-General António Guterres, referring to how the consequences of what happens there will catastrophically affect the rest of the world.
UN Photo/Mark Garten # UN71014338