ABU DHABI: UN chief Antonio Guterres said climate-related devastation was striking the planet on a weekly basis and warned on Sunday that urgent action must be taken to avoid a catastrophe.

“We are here because the world is facing a grave climate emergency,” Guterres told a two-day Abu Dhabi Climate Meeting to prepare for a Climate Action Summit in New York in September.

Guterres said destructive climate change was moving at an increasingly fast pace.

“Climate disruption is happening now... It is progressing even faster than the world’s top scientists have predicted,” the UN secretary general said.

“It is outpacing our efforts to address it. Climate change is running faster than we are,” he said.

“Every week brings new climate-related devastation ... floods, drought, heatwaves, wildfires and super storms,” Guterres said.

He warned the situation would only deteriorate unless “we act now with ambition and urgency”, but some of the world’s decision-makers still did not realise the dangers.

The meeting in Abu Dhabi, with government and civil society participants from dozens of countries, will select from 100 proposals for protecting the climate, said UN special envoy Luis Alfonso de Alba.

“I think what is important is to identify those proposals that have transformation impact,” De Alba said.

The selected proposals will be submitted to the summit in New York, he said.

The UN chief held out hope that the Paris Agreement could cut harmful emissions and reduce global warming.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2019