United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday that the UN and the African Union (AU) will strengthen cooperation in tackling climate change and securing financing for development.
Climate change and financing for development are the two battles, in which the AU and the UN “will work hand in hand in the months to come,” the secretary-general said at a joint press conference presided over by himself and Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the AU Commission, held at the UN headquarters in New York.
“The African continent is one of the areas of the world where the impact of climate change is more dramatic and devastating,” said the UN chief, adding that in light of the storms in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi and the drought “progressing dramatically in areas like the Sahel, we are not winning the battle in relation to climate change.”
The UN chief noted that more ambition in “mitigation and financing” is needed to create the conditions “to reverse the present trends.”
“Without that, the African continent will inevitably have dramatic impacts that will undermine its development and undermine its security,” he said, warning that “all the world will suffer.”
The secretary-general stressed that the UN and the AU “have a common project – the Agenda 2063 of African development and the Agenda 2030 of sustainable development, globally, adding that the two agendas “are aligned,” but cannot be implemented without financing.
“A common battle that we will be facing in the next few months is to make sure that there is a quantum leap in the available financing to development, not only in the African continent, but particularly in the African continent,” said the secretary-general.
