UN climate chief wants Cop30 to trumpet benefits of green economy

Cleaning up industry and the global economy will produce huge economic dividends, the UN's climate chief has said.

- Fiona Harvey Environment editor

Governments will almost certainly fail to come up with measures to fulfil the Paris agreement on climate change but can still reap the advantages of low-carbon policies, said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change.

In a last-ditch call to leaders summoned to New York by the UN secretary general, he said: "We're moving in the right direction. Not fast enough, not deep enough, but [the progress] is showing that something is working. We need to find all the levers that are available to us, to see how we can accelerate further."

On Wednesday, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Stiell and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, will make a final plea to leaders - excluding Donald Trump, who is snubbing the meeting - to present national plans on the climate ahead of the Cop30 summit in Brazil in November.

These national plans - known as NDCs - are required under the Paris agreement to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, beyond which the impacts of the climate crisis become irreversible.

The deadline for the plans, which cover the next decade of greenhouse gas emissions, was meant to be February. But in the midst of Donald Trump taking office and global political upheaval, Stiell extended it to the end of this month. At that point, the UN will assess the plans and judge whether they fulfil the aims of the Paris agreement.