All you need to know about newly-launched UN Climate Solidarity Pact

CAIRO - 7 November 2022: At the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched a Climate Solidarity Pact between developed and emerging economies.

"The pact aims at exerting more efforts among the world countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions this decade within the 1.5-degree goal," Guterres said in his speech at the opening session of the 13-day conference held in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh, South Sinai.

The pact could be developed to be a legal frame for the loss and damage mechanism, per which the developed countries provide financial and technological support to the developing countries for adaptation to climate change impacts.

“In the pact, the wealthier countries and international financial institutions provide financial and technical assistance to help emerging economies speed their own renewable energy transition,” said the UN Chief.

He added that the pact aims to phase out coal usage in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries by 2030 and in the rest of the world by 2040.

The OECD countries include Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, the United States, Australia, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand.

“The pact will provide universal, affordable, sustainable energy for all. Developed and emerging economies will unite within the pact around a common strategy and combine capacities and resources for the benefit of humankind,” he continued.

Guterres called for the US and China as the world’s largest economies to make this pact a reality, saying “It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact – or a Collective Suicide Pact.”