UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- New measures to speed up the transition to clean energy and green economies are among the initiatives to be unveiled during the UN Climate Action Summit next week, United Nations (UN) officials announced on Tuesday.
The summit will present practical and new measures to "speed up the transition from coal to clean energy and to cut the pollution that is harming our health, and protect nature but also unlock the potential of nature to deliver on climate solutions," said UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed at a press conference here.
The summit would help "create cleaner, greener ways to work and move; speed up transition in key sectors from grey to green economies, safeguard people from the impacts of climate change already being felt right now, and help make sure that we leave no one behind," she added.
Heads of state and government, high-level representatives from member states and representatives from the private sector, and the teenage activist Greta Thunberg are expected to be in New York to tackle what the UN considers "the defining issue of our time."
The Climate Action Summit on Monday is expected to be a forum to hold countries accountable to the international commitments they made to cut global warming as part of the 2016 Paris Agreement.
It will be preceded by a Youth Climate Summit on Saturday, where participants from across the globe will showcase their solutions on how to combat the crisis.
Luis Alfonso de Alba, UN secretary-general's special envoy for the 2019 Climate Action Summit, said 100 young people will be travelling on carbon neutral, or "green" tickets.
"We provided support to 100 youth from different countries and they will be joined by a much bigger number. Our expectation is more than 700 on the Saturday, and we will try to accommodate as many as possible in the General Assembly hall on Monday," he said.
