The United Nations says some 80 countries have signaled that they want to up their commitments under the 2015 Paris climate accord.
The U.N. secretary general's special envoy for the 2019 Climate Summit didn't give any details on which countries plan to increase their pledges. He did say that the countries would come up with a plan to increase their commitments and then identify what actions they can take to meet them.
"We need to step up ambition quite radically. We are not talking about a small incremental approach. But rather a quite drastic increase," Luis Alfonso de Alba said.
Under the Paris climate accord, each country is required to put forth "their best efforts through 'nationally determined contributions'" to curb their carbon emissions "and to strengthen these efforts in the years ahead." The first official deadline for the countries to up their contributions is 2020.
Right now, the Paris accord's aim is to limit global temperature rise to "well below" 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels this century. U.N. policymakers are also looking into efforts to drop the threshold even lower — to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
