Small Islands Big Economies Must Do More To Help Us, Say At-Risk Nations

The G20 are failing poor and vulnerable countries by not agreeing to a climate plan that would ensure their people’s survival, leading figures at the Cop26 climate talks have warned.

- Fiona Harvey

The G20 are failing poor and vulnerable countries by not agreeing to a climate plan that would ensure their people’s survival, leading figures at the Cop26 climate talks have warned.

Leaders representing more than 1 billion of the people most at risk from the climate crisis told the Guardian they were “extremely concerned” as they had hoped for more from the G20 heads of the world’s biggest economies, who met in Rome at the weekend.

They warned the prospects of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a threshold that scientists say is a “planetary boundary”, were slipping away as the vital UN conference opened in Glasgow.

Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda and current chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries, said: “From what I’ve seen, it appears we are going to overshoot 1.5C. We are very concerned about that. This is a matter of survival for us.”