UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called on world leaders on Saturday to declare a climate emergency in their countries as the world faces a “catastrophic temperature rise”.
He said the commitments to keep the global temperature rise this century to below 2 degrees Celsius did not go far enough and are not being met: “Five years after Paris, we are still not going in the right direction”.
It came as world leaders spoke in a virtual summit hosted by the United Nations, United Kingdom and France to mark the signing of the agreement.
The summit also comes a day after the European Union agreed to cut 55% of 1990 level greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, a move that environmentalists said did not go far enough.