The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is convening the 2019 Climate Action Summit to raise the global level of ambition to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and to galvanize action that can limit climate change to 2°C and even 1.5°C as science now asks.

The Secretary-General is calling on all leaders to come to New York in September with concrete, realistic plans to enhance their nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade, and to net zero emissions by 2050.

The Summit will serve as a public platform for only for leaders – Member States, as well as finance, business, civil society and local leaders from public and private sectors – who are ready to:

• mobilize and raise political ambition that will result in enhanced and irreversible commitments to action in national climate plans to significantly cut emissions; strengthen climate resilience; and making public and private finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development;
• galvanize bottom-up action from cities, regions, civil society, but also private sector;
• contribute to the multi-stakeholder coalitions that will develop ambitious solutions in the action areas of the Summit: global transition to renewable energy; sustainable and resilient infrastructures and cities; sustainable agriculture and management of forests and oceans; resilience and adaptation to climate impacts; and alignment of public and private finance with a net zero economy.

The Summit will take place on 23 September 2019 at UN Headquarters in New York. It will be held in the General Assembly Hall.

The Secretary-General is calling on all leaders to come to New York in September with concrete, realistic plans to enhance their nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade, and to net zero emissions by 2050.

The Summit will serve as a public platform for only for leaders – Member States, as well as finance, business, civil society and local leaders from public and private sectors – who are ready to:

• mobilize and raise political ambition that will result in enhanced and irreversible commitments to action in national climate plans to significantly cut emissions; strengthen climate resilience; and making public and private finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development;
• galvanize bottom-up action from cities, regions, civil society, but also private sector;
• contribute to the multi-stakeholder coalitions that will develop ambitious solutions in the action areas of the Summit: global transition to renewable energy; sustainable and resilient infrastructures and cities; sustainable agriculture and management of forests and oceans; resilience and adaptation to climate impacts; and alignment of public and private finance with a net zero economy.

In order to ensure that the transformative actions are as impactful as possible, the Secretary-General has prioritized nine action portfolios, which are recognized as having high potential to curb greenhouse gas emissions and increased global action on adaptation and resilience.

These include:

• Finance: making public and private finance flows fully consistent with the decarbonization of all priority sectors and advance resilience;
• Energy Transition: accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, as well as making significant gains in energy efficiency;
• Industry Transition: transforming industries such as oil and gas, steel, cement, chemicals, aviation, shipping and information technology;
• Nature-Based Solutions: reducing emissions, increasing sink capacity and enhancing resilience within and across forestry, agriculture, ocean and food systems, including through biodiversity conservation, leveraging supply chains and technology;
• Infrastructure, cities and local Action: spurring bottom-up action and advancing mitigation and resilience commitments at local levels, with a focus on new commitments on low-emission buildings, mass transport and urban infrastructure; and resilience for the urban poor;
• Resilience and Adaptation: advancing global efforts to address and manage the impacts and risks of climate change, particularly in those communities and nations most vulnerable.
• Youth and mobilization: Promoting youth and public mobilization and propose solutions to the social and political challenges that are impeding ambitious climate action.
• The social transition: Ensuring that all climate plans include concrete steps to ensure that transition fair and just and that people have access to the tangible benefits of climate action, including in health and in decent jobs;.
• Mitigation ambition: Raising the stakes for the largest emitters to present commitments to significantly cut emissions in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade, and to net zero emissions by 2050

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report tells us that it is still possible to limit climate change to 1.5°C if—and only if—there are rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. According to the same report, time is short and ambitious action must be ramped up now if we are to reach the 1.5°C goal. But greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise to unprecedented levels and the impacts of climate change being felt on all continents. Countries made commitments at the time the Paris Agreement was adopted, including to submit new Nationally Determined Contributions in 2020. Prior to the 2020 deadline, the Climate Action Summit will ask leaders to demonstrate leadership and increase their ambition.

The Summit will focus on tangible climate actions. It will not be a summit of national speeches. Rather, the Summit will consist of selected commitments of coalitions of countries, companies, and civil society announcing a range of truly ambitious and credible actions and commitments as well as any national announcement in line with the Secretary-General's objective for the Summit.

The Summit opens a week full of high-level events, including a summit on the Sustainable Development Goals, a dialogue on Financing for Development, a conference on universal health care, and the five-year review of efforts to implement the Samoa Pathway for Small Island Developing States. All of the events concern the achievement of sustainable development.

The Climate Action Summit is not part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process designed to oversee implementation of the Paris Agreement, nor is it an alternative to the UNFCCC. Rather, the Summit is being convened to fully support that process by providing a much-needed shot in the arm to implementation efforts, an effort that was fully endorsed by countries at previous conferences since COP21 in Paris, France, in 2015. By spurring increased levels of action and ambition, it is hoped that countries will submit far more ambitious national plans at COP25 in 2019 and COP26 in 2020 to ensure that climate change is limited to well under 2°C, or better, 1.5°C

The Climate Action Summit is not about negotiations. The negotiations resulted in the Paris Agreement and the Katowice programme of work and they are over. Now is the time to implement. The meeting in Abu Dhabi, which will take place on 30 June-1 July, will bring together high-level representative from both the private and public sectors for an initial vetting of initiatives to make sure the Summit presents actions that are the most ambitious, meaningful and coherent.

The Summit will result in the commitments and actions made by the leaders of government, business, finance, and civil society on the actions to address climate change. These will be captured in a summary by the Secretary-General at the end of the Summit.

The Secretary-General has asked world leaders to come to the Summit to announce bold actions and multi-stakeholder initiatives that will spearhead ambitious action on the ground. These initiatives, consisting of participants from Governments, the private sector and civil society, will address several high-impact areas, such as transition out of fossil-fuel, in particular coal, to renewable energy, industry transition in sectors such as shipping or steel, climate finance and carbon pricing; infrastructure, cities and local action, resilience and adaptation, nature-based solutions.