Abu Dhabi: The UAE is a champion in global efforts to check climate change, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said in the capital on Sunday.
He urged other nations to follow the example set by the UAE in terms of sustainability efforts and clean energy deployment.
Ban was addressing a press conference on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Ascent, a two-day meeting to discuss concrete actions against climate change. The conference comes ahead of the UN Secretary General's New York Summit in September.
Ascent Abu Dhabi
In a order to accelerate the process towards a global legal climate agreement, a host of high-level officials, investors and civil society leaders met in the capital on the first day of Ascent Abu Dhabi.
The Abu Dhabi meeting seeks to spur action against climate change ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit in New York on September 23, and also drum up political support and momentum for the regulations to be agreed upon at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) scheduled for December 2015 in Paris.
"We are running out of time to reverse the effects of climate change, and we have only 15 years to take actions that prevent a global temperature increase of two degrees centigrade," Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and Special Envoy for Energy and Climate Change, said at the opening of the meeting.
Al Jaber urged attendees to commit to a decade of action.
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Ban also said that Ascent Abu Dhabi is not intended to be a "talk-shop meeting".
"We will focus on solutions at this meeting, which is a major milestone on the path to the September 2014 summit in New York," he said.
