United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday urged rich nations to honor their commitments to help the world's poor countries fight climate change in a speech to Lesotho's Parliament and repeated his hope that Africa would soon have permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council.
Guterres is on a three-day visit to southern Africa and was in South Africa on Wednesday. His two-day trip to neighboring Lesotho, a small landlocked mountainous kingdom, will also see him visit the Katse Dam, an integral part of the country's plans to harness its water reserves.
A focus of Guterres' visit has been the money poor nations in Africa and elsewhere need to deal with the impact of a warming planet. While Africa contributes a tiny amount to global warming, it is one of the worst affected continents.
Countries adopted an agreement at the U.N. climate talks in Azerbaijan last month to inject at least $300 billion a year to help developing nations cope with global warming. It was far short of the more than $1 trillion developing countries were calling for.
"Developed countries must meet their commitments ... and deliver the promised $300 billion annually for climate finance," Gutteres said to Lesotho's lawmakers. “Landlocked and least developed countries like yours are especially vulnerable.”
He also said the new Loss and Damage Fund that was created to compensate poor countries for natural disasters caused by climate change “must be operationalized swiftly and funded generously by those most responsible for climate destruction.”
