Accelerating Action to Build a Resilient 1.50 World

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UNFCCC COP-25

Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction Ms. Mami Mizutori

Marrakesh Partnership

Accelerating Action to Build a Resilient 1.50 World

Tuesday 10 December

The single most significant thing we can do to reduce disaster risk and to avoid creating future disaster risk, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Limited progress to date shows that this can be done if we scale up.

As the Secretary-General has said, we have about ten years left to take action. If we do not act now, then we are facing a nightmare of slow but steady collapse of our natural world amidst a rise in extreme weather events which will stretch us to breaking point in terms of our ability to prepare and respond to them.

Globalization demands that we join the dots between the rise in extreme weather events, whether it is the wildfires which threaten urban spaces in developed countries like the US and Australia, the recent flash floods and landslides which have left almost three million people in need in the Horn of Africa,  the poor harvests and prolonged drought which are driving migration from countries in Central America… there are so many examples now of how the climate emergency is derailing efforts to eradicate poverty and to achieve the other SDGs.

While good work is going on in terms of managing disaster risk and reducing mortality, the future lies in the hands of the world’s most developed nations.

The G20 is responsible for almost 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and I would like to appeal to them to follow best practice and step up their level of ambition so that we get to net zero emissions by mid-century at the latest. It will benefit the world at large and secure the future and well-being of their own citizens.

As the UN Environment Programme has expressed it in its Emissions Gap report, we need to see reductions of 7.6% annually in the coming decade. This is a realistic target and there is no time to waste if it is to be achieved.

In the meantime, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction will continue to build the case for climate action and disaster risk reduction by improving our understanding of disaster risk through monitoring progress, or the lack of it, across basic indicators such as mortality, numbers of people affected, economic loses and damage to critical infrastructure.