#ClimateChange: UN urges leaders to act Now, and Save the World
“Let’s go to work and let’s get our world back on track,” Antonio Guterres, the UN UN Secretary-General ordered.
We have everything to lose. We have no time to waste. The answers are all around us. Nature’s inspiration, our innovation. Tomorrow is at risk. We are people and the planet.
These were the powerful quotes displayed at the 77th United Nations General Assembly screens during the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) moment, an event during the high-level week with the world’s leaders and governments that focuses on issues embedded in the SDGs as a ‘To-Do List’ for a better future for all on safe and healthy planet convened by the UN Secretary-General.
The world is facing a series of crises that threaten the very survival of humanity, from conflicts to climate change. However, it is the latter that has seen a lot of emphasized on during the SDG moment. For instance, areas like Yambio in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state have not been flood-prone a dozen years ago, the area has always been fertile for agriculture, but now it’s experiencing constant floods just like flood-prone states like Jonglei, Upper Nile, and Unity states, leaving the soil bare and infertile. Thus, worsening the hunger crisis in the process.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas, the UNICEF goodwill ambassador believes as the climate crises continue to rise ending lives and livelihoods, global solidarity becomes more important than ever before.
“All is not well with our world. These crises did not come by chance, but they can be fixed with a plan. We all deserve a just, safe, and healthy world to live in but time is running out,” said Jonas.
The plans were set in place when world leaders came together in 2015 with the SDGs. With just eight years remaining for the set target of 2030, governments have seen more problems related to climate change than ever before. With floods displacing millions in South Sudan, Sudan, and Pakistan, wildfires in the west, drought in Sub-Saharan Africa, and hurricanes in the Americas.
The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, reiterated that a world driven by climate crises can’t provide a sustainable future. She asked for a behavior change related to waste disposal starting with the children.
“Your children can lead the world. A world that recognizes that, if we take the plastics and things that we use and throw away, that they have to go somewhere.”
“Children can lead the revolution to change our habits and if you change those, the ‘To-Do List’ of protecting the oceans and protecting the land becomes a little easier,” Mottley emphasized.
There is no right to live, there is no right to success, and there is no right to ensure prosperity. Regrettably, Prime Minister Mottley said the world leaders have collectively “failed to lay the foundation that will allow us to continue to see the people who become the victims of hunger.”
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres says worsening crises pose a threat to the accomplishment of the SDGs.
“We are living through a moment of great peril for our world, with crises such as climate change, rising costs of food and energy, and the ongoing effects of the pandemic. In the face of such perils, it is tempting to put our long-term development priorities aside,” the UN Chief said.
These perils we face, Guterres notes are no match for a world united stating strongly that development cannot wait.
World leaders will have something to meditate on after the General Assembly. Something the Barbados Prime Minister Mottley noted in her million-dollar question; “are we so arrogant to believe that there will be no failed societies and no extinct species?”
A question that world leaders can use to re-evaluate their actions and priorities but until world leaders actively start to implement the ‘To-Do List’ in the SDGs in their respective capacities, the people and the planet will continue to suffer the devastating effects of climate change.
“Let’s go to work and let’s get our world back on track,” Guterres ordered.
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