UN climate change summit in New York – as it happened

I will now wrap up the live blog. The summit will culminate in a closing ceremony in the next hour or two. The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg has written a wrap up of today’s major events, including France’s major commitment to the Green Climate Fund. I recommend the efforts of the live teams at Responding to Climate Change and the World Resources Institute as the evening goes on.

Most of the major announcements and speeches have been made. Over the coming days expect to see plenty of analysis to determine whether this summit will end up in the ‘historic momentum builder’ box or the ‘bilious talkfest’ box or somewhere in between. Much of the initial reaction has been positive. A lot of focus will be on the concrete monetary commitments made by France and other nations, including forensic examination to find out how much of this money is genuinely new and how much amounts to old promises with new names.

Here is a summary of events from the day:

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon opened the session telling leaders from across the world: “We are not here to talk, we are here to make history”
  
• Actor Leonardo DiCaprio told leaders they had a choice: “You can make history or you will be vilified for it”
• France joined Germany in pledging $1bn of climate aid over the next few years
  
• A number of smaller developed economies pledged almost $300 million to the Green Climate Fund
• US president Barack Obama pushed China to redraw the “old divisions” between rich and poor nations and take on the responsibility of a “big nation”
• Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli committed to double the country’s contribution to a “South-South” fund which will help developing nations adapt to climate change.
• UK prime minister David Cameron urged a global agreement in Paris but failed to join France and Germany as leading EU economies pledged large sums to the Green Climate Fund
• A major declaration on forests was signed by 27 governments and more than 100 companies and organisations. It committed to end global deforestation by 2030
• In Britain, Greenpeace protesters have taken over a freight train en route to a coal power plant
  
• A number of nations made commitments to significantly reduce carbon emissions and grow renewable energy

Finally, after a day of new commitments to the Green Climate Fund, how close is the fund to reaching its target of US$15 billion ambition before the Lima climate conference in December?

Further to the German announcement to end coal development finance, which apparently was announced last week, Jan Kowalzig from Oxfam Germany says the announcement is “only part of the story”.

Kowalzig says:

“It applies to development finance only; it does not apply to the finance provided through the IPEX, the export credit subsidiary of the government bank KfW. In the past, more than half of such government backed financing for coal overseas went via the IPEX. So despite today’s announcement, the government has not ruled out financing new coal power stations overseas, despite all the rhetoric about cutting emissions, global transformation – and the German “Energiewende”.”

Friends of the Earth’s campaigns and policy director Craig Bennett says David Cameron’s allusion to fracking as “lower carbon” in his speech earlier today “is like trying to sell cigarettes at a hospital”.

“Twenty-first century problems need twenty-first century solutions: If we want to build a cleaner, safer future we must switch to renewable power and end our dirty addiction to fossil fuels.

“With clean renewable power becoming ever cheaper, available now and accessible to ordinary people, we simply don’t need to frack. It’s at best a red herring and at worst a dangerous folly.”

Interesting New York Times graphic showing China has the most citizens vulnerable to coastal flooding.

Correction: Germany has promised to end development finance for new coal power stations, not for domestic coal power stations as stated earlier. H/T Oxfam America.

Another piece of positive reaction to the speech made by China’s vice premier today. Greenpeace senior policy officer Li Shuo said:

“Five years after Copenhagen, China is in a vastly different position. Domestic air pollution is forcing the country to embark on a new path away from coal and 2014 saw the lowest coal consumption growth in a decade. After the surging carbon emissions over the past decade, we welcome the Vice Premier’s pledge to peak emissions as early as possible, and call on China to peak its greenhouse gas emission much before 2025. The country must also capitalize on its domestic progress on coal and deliver an ambitious post-2020 target.”

According to Responding to Climate Change Saudi Arabia’s representative has pushed back against calls for a carbon price. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the oil giant’s minister petroleum and mineral resources, Ali Naimi, said a price on emissions would “undermine the principle of justice and equity”.

RTCC reports:

Naimi said: “Saudi Arabia believes firmly that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions must be achieved without affecting economic growth.” He says that Saudi has taken efforts towards economic diversification as a step towards more sustainable development.”

The World Resource Institute reports that the Swedish National Pension Fund will divest $100 billion worth of assets before the Paris conference in 2015.

The World Resource Institute reports that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan expects and explosion in green capital in the next six years.

Moynihan said his company predicts the global green bond market will grow to $300 billion by 2020. That’s up from the $40 billion in green bonds expected to be issued in 2014, and the $11 billion issued in 2013.Green bonds are bonds are securities meant to raise capital to finance low-carbon investments.

This echoes earlier statements from World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.

Forests have been a prominent topic in todays discussions and a major initiative has been announced to cut the rate of deforestation in half by 2020 and end it by 2030.

The New York Declaration on Forests has 130 signatories, including the governments of the US, UK, Germany, Indonesia and the Congo, as well as companies, civil society and indigenous peoples.

The declaration also calls for the restoration of more than 350 million hectares of forests and croplands, an area greater than the size of India.

The declaration was backed by commitments from food companies, including palm oil giants, to deforestation-free sourcing policies of palm oil. Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts today joined 19 other major food companies to make zero-deforestation pledges.

The Guardian’s US environment correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg spoke to Al Gore at an investors event where executives from IKEA, Statoil and other multinationals announced their support for a price on carbon. Gore said the positive momentum coming from the corporate sector at the summit would have an “unstoppable” effect on markets.

Goldenberg reports:

The former US vice president and climate champion Al Gore has given his seal of approval to the climate summit – saying that it had helped advance the prospects for a global warming deal at the end of next year in Paris.

“There is no question that a considerable amount of momentum was generated here,” Gore told The Guardian. “I think it was a tremendous boost to the whole movement that is towards the Paris agreement.”

He said he had not been able to track the competing initiatives in real time, but he said he was pleased by the tone adopted by both the Chinese and American leaders. “Certainly,, there was nothing discouraging,” he said.

However, Gore was more effusive about the initiatives from business leaders on the sidelines of the summit, with chief executives of international corporations pledging support for a new clean energy economy.

“This is going to be unstoppable in markets,” he said, listing the expansion of renewable energy technologies. “The only question is how quickly it can be accelerated to overtake the destructive forces that are unleashed by these continuing absurdly high levels of emissions, but I am encouraged.”

Julie Bishop, the foreign minister of Australia, says the country is on track to meet its plan to reduce its emissions 5% below 2000 levels by 2020.

She touts the government’s much maligned “direct action” strategy for carbon reduction.

Australia will announce a post-2020 emissions target next year.

Representatives of countries whose leaders snubbed the summit are now speaking - this list includes major industrial economies and key carbon market players India, Russia, Canada, Australia, UAE and Germany.

Here’s a handy (non-exaustive) summary of the pledges, initiatives and announcements made by countries from Mashable.

Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, writes in the China Daily today:

“In a world where 4 million people die each year from burning firewood and dung in open fires inside homes because they do not have access to modern energy, while poverty, lack of clean water, infectious diseases, poor education and too little food afflict billions we cannot with a straight face claim that climate should be our top priority.”

While this point may be controversial, he does allude to the results from a UN survey that shows the majority of people place the threat from climate change low on their list of priorities for action. Lomborg argues that this shows the difficulties facing leaders who want to take bold action on climate change.

A number of partnerships and initiatives are being announced via the summit’s twitter feed. Here’s a quick wrap.

Cities around the world commit to cut emission outputs by 454 mt annually by 2020