Developing countries at risk from wilder weather and rising seas urged all governments on Wednesday to meet a deadline to deliver stronger national climate action plans to the United Nations by the end of 2020, stressing that their survival depends on it.
About 195 nations committed under the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change to submit updated plans this year, with a view to boosting so-far inadequate pledges to curb planet-heating emissions and adapt to the impacts of warming.
But the health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have thrown climate diplomacy off track and forced a delay of this year's U.N. climate summit until November 2021.