Speaking up for climate action: Rockström at Climate Summits in New York and California

25/09/2018 - Alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and other distinguished guests, PIK Co-Director Designate Johan Rockström will speak at the One Planet Summit this week in New York. Co-hosted by President Macron, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank and Michael Bloomberg, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action, the One Planet Summit is a forum for mobilization and actions. With the aim to speed up the global transition to a low-carbon economy, the meeting is part of a series of high level events in the run up to the UN Climate Conference in Polish Catowice - from the Global Climate Action Summit in September in San Francisco to the Paris Peace Forum in November.
Speaking up for climate action: Rockström at Climate Summits in New York and California

Focusing on the ecological, social, and economic impacts of climate change, the One Planet Summit in New York aims at providing a roadmap of concrete actions and green finance to address climate change. Heads of State, business leaders, and other non-state actors, will come together to discuss ongoing multilateral climate action. Beside the designated Co-Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Johan Rockström, the participants range from Bill Gates, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, the President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Dr. Hilda C. Heine, or Christine Lagarde, Managing Director and Chair of the International Monetary Fund.

Earlier this week, Rockström discussed Environmental Stewardship in the Sprint to 2020 at the Sustainable Development Impact Summit in New York with prominent speakers like Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States. Organized by the World Economic Forum the Summit brought together experts to discuss sustainable development and to seek solutions to climate change.

Already in September, Rockström was invited as speaker to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, bringing together leaders and people from all around the world to advance worldwide climate commitments and accelerate climate action. “We’ve now reached 1°C warming on planet earth – the highest temperature on earth since the last ice age. We are at the edge where we need to start transformations,” Rockström emphasized in his joint talk with Christiana Figueres, Convener Mission 2020. “Already at 2°C we may be crossing a planetary threshold where we could enter an irreversible journey towards a hothouse earth”. Participants of the San Francisco Summit included, among others, actor Harrison Ford, Congresswoman and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, and New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio.


Weblink to the One Planet Summit taking place on September 26th in New York: https://www.oneplanetsummit.fr/en
Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB8HzBcIaRg

Weblink to the Sustainable Development Impact Summit in New York:
https://www.weforum.org/events/sustainable-development-impact-summit
Video "Environmental Stewardship in the Sprint to 2020": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-LB4R42zNI

Video of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco: https://youtu.be/Z6ktyKIAYQ4?t=41m46s

Weblink to the Paris Peace Forum from 11-13th November 2018:
https://parispeaceforum.org/

Policy adviceGlobalClimate PolicyDirector Rockström