UN Climate Change Summit 2014 held in New York

UN Climate Change Summit 2014 was held at UN headquarters in New York on 23 September 2014 to put the planet on course towards reversing global warming.

The purpose of the 2014 Climate Summit was to raise political momentum for a meaningful universal climate agreement in Paris in 2015. Moreover, it aimed to galvanize transformative action in all countries to reduce emissions and build resilience to the adverse impacts of climate change.

It is the largest gathering of world leaders on climate change after the Copenhagen conference on climate change that ended in disarray in 2009. However, absence of leaders of China and India puts the cloud over the event.

Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio was also present on the UN summit on climate change.  UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hosted the summit of all 120 leaders.

Contributions announced by the world leaders in the summit

• A new coalition of governments, business, finance, multilateral development banks and civil society leaders announced their intent to mobilise over 200 billion US dollars for financing low-carbon and climate-resilient development.
• Countries strongly reaffirmed their support for mobilising public and private finance to meet the 100 billion US dollar goal per annum by 2020.
• Leaders expressed strong support for the Green Climate Fund and many called for the Fund’s initial capitalization at an amount no less than 10 billion US dollars. Six others committed to allocate contributions by November 2014.
• The European Union committed 3 billion US dollars for mitigation efforts in developing countries between 2014 and 2020.
• The International Development Finance Club (IDFC) announced that it is on track to increase direct green/climate financing to 100 billion US dollars a year for new climate finance activities by the end of 2015.
• Leading commercial banks announced their plans to issue 30 billion US dollars of Green Bonds by 2015, and announced their intention to increase the amount placed in climate-smart development to 10 times of the current amount by 2020.
• A coalition of institutional investors committed to decarbonizing 100 billion US dollars by December 2015.
• The insurance industry committed to double its green investments to 84 billion US dollars by the end of 2015.
• Three major pension funds from North America and Europe announced plans to accelerate their investments in low-carbon investments across asset classes up to more than 31 billion US dollars by 2020.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

The summit talks are separate from the negotiations held under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to negotiate 1997 Kyoto Protocol. UNFCCC will culminate with the Paris conference in December 2015.