UN Secretary-General António Guterres has praised India’s commitment to fighting climate change during a ceremony in which Egypt became Chair of the Group of 77 (G77) and China
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has praised India’s commitment to fighting climate change during a ceremony in which Egypt became Chair of the Group of 77 (G77) and China.
The G77 is the United Nation’s largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries, with 134 members, which promotes their collective economic interests and negotiating capacity.
India is a member and in 2016 joined the Paris agreement, a pact signed at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that commits participating countries to efforts regarding the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change adaption and climate finance.
Each country regularly reports to the UN and fellow signatories on their contributions to tackling global warming.
India is currently the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world and could be one of the countries worst affected by the impacts of climate change, including food production, water security and weather patterns.
In May last year, Guterres stated the world was “in a mess” and urged the international community to continue efforts to mitigate climate change even if one government abandoned the deal.
He was referring to the United States, which President Trump announced would withdraw from the Agreement two days later on June 2, 2017.
Trump argued that India and other countries like China were benefitting the most from the Paris deal and that business and employment in the US were being unfairly hit by the climate change commitments within the agreement.
Guterres named certain members of the G77, its African countries, as the biggest victims of climate change, with widespread drought on the continent and the devastating impacts of hurricanes and rising sea levels on small island countries.
In a UN statement, Guterres said: “We cannot be defeated by climate change and we are not yet winning this battle.
“But at the same time, of the largest economies of the world the two largest economies of the G77 are strongly committed to the leadership in climate action – and I refer to China and India.
“In a moment when others are failing, I see the largest economies of the Group of 77 and China to be assuming the leadership in climate action to make sure that we don't suffer the dramatic and devastating impacts of climate change, as unfortunately we are already witnessing and things will get much worse if we are not able to defeat this threat.”
