The open­ing day of de­bate at this week’s high-lev­el ses­sions of the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York, yes­ter­day, un­furled an abun­dance of con­cern over the short time left to achieve the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals by 2030.

Many of the lead­ers who mount­ed the plat­form ac­knowl­edged that the world is nowhere near where it should be, with some al­so point­ing out that small is­land states and poor coun­tries will con­tin­ue to feel the im­pact the most.

T&T’s UN Am­bas­sador Den­nis Fran­cis, in his open­ing re­marks as pres­i­dent of the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, fit­ting­ly told coun­tries that their in­her­ent ca­pac­i­ty to tack­le cli­mate change and oth­er con­cerns re­lat­ed to sus­tain­abil­i­ty was sim­ply not enough with­out ac­tive will­ing­ness to do so.

He urged lead­ers to ac­cept that there is an im­por­tant need now to “re-en­er­gise” mem­bers of the world body to act not just as pol­i­cy­mak­ers, but as mean­ing­ful im­ple­menters of change.

His was a time­ly and rel­e­vant call, giv­en that many lofty promis­es made by the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and at pe­riph­er­al UN meet­ings have not ma­te­ri­alised.

Among them, the pledge made at the 15th Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP15) in Copen­hagen in 2009 to make US$100 bil­lion avail­able an­nu­al­ly to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to help ad­dress cli­mate change.

Brazil’s Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va high­light­ed this as a ma­jor fail­ure as he took to the podi­um af­ter Am­bas­sador Fran­cis’ open­ing re­marks yes­ter­day, not­ing that with 2030 just sev­en years away, the amount need­ed for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to fund crit­i­cal changes now runs in­to the tril­lions.

He cor­rect­ly at­trib­uted this to the lack of ex­e­cu­tion by the de­vel­oped na­tions, which has left poor­er coun­tries in a po­si­tion where they can­not ad­dress the chal­lenges from the im­pacts of cli­mate change due to the de­vel­oped world’s de­lays in re­duc­ing car­bon emis­sions.

For those un­able to read the writ­ing on the wall, the year 2023 has pro­vid­ed enough ev­i­dence of where the world is head­ed should lead­ers fail to heed the warn­ings.

The Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA) has an­nounced that this year is the worst on record for bil­lion-dol­lar cli­mate dis­as­ters in the Unit­ed States.

Oth­er ex­perts have warned that ex­treme events are like­ly to be­come more fre­quent and in­tense un­less dras­tic ac­tion is tak­en to curb hu­man-dri­ven cli­mate change.

The dis­as­trous flood­ing in Libya, the dev­as­tat­ing wild­fire in Maui and Greece, Trop­i­cal Storm Hi­lary be­com­ing the first such storm to hit Cal­i­for­nia since 1939, and record heat waves across the US and Eu­rope are but a few ex­am­ples of how the change in cli­mate is af­fect­ing the world.

Ju­ly, this year, was the hottest month ever record­ed.

Here at home, we too have been bat­tling with an un­bear­able heat spell, with the tem­per­a­ture ris­ing to 35.1 de­grees Cel­sius yes­ter­day, the hottest day so far this year.

Ac­tion is des­per­ate­ly need­ed now more than ever.

The rich­est ten per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion is re­spon­si­ble for al­most half of all the car­bon re­leased in­to the at­mos­phere, and their un­ac­cept­able roll­backs and de­lays on­ly make is­land coun­tries like ours, sit­ting ducks for what’s to come.

Am­bas­sador Fran­cis al­so said yes­ter­day, right­ly so, that the UN does not have the lux­u­ry of ex­cus­es, nor are its mem­bers ab­solved of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

The onus is on those gath­ered in New York this week to col­lec­tive­ly make up for the loss of mo­men­tum in re­vers­ing car­bon emis­sions and work much hard­er in the re­main­ing sev­en years to make progress on what they have promised to de­liv­er.

A missed op­por­tu­ni­ty here and at COP28, sched­uled for the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates from No­vem­ber 30 to De­cem­ber 12, will fur­ther cur­tail the fu­ture of our plan­et and the bil­lions of us who live on it.