Climate Week in New York City first kicked off in 2009 as a sideshow to the United Nations General Assembly — a chance for activists to make sure their voices were heard as the world’s development leaders gathered downtown. More than 15 years later, it has become a spectacle of its own, gathering corporate giants, city leaders, and activists to collaborate on and launch new initiatives.
Many see UNGA and Climate Week as two separate events in the same city — but there is clear potential for overlap. This year, all countries that have signed the Paris Agreement, agreed at the 21st U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP21, in 2015, are required to submit their new climate pledges. These nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, must be sent every five years to demonstrate each country’s commitments to help the world stick to the goal of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Usually, NDCs are submitted long before UNGA — in February of the same year. But this year, it’s crunch time. Only 36 out of 197 countries have published their NDCs. Still missing from the list are some of the world’s biggest emitters, including India, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and Indonesia. A high-level meeting of 40 heads of state on Sept.24, where each leader will give a three-minute preview of their country’s NDC — published or not — will be the first preview of the missing commitments.
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
