UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he is counting on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to "play a constructive role" in making the Paris Climate Change Conference successful, as he addressed a Ministerial Meeting of the LDCs.
Ban added that unlocking LDCs' untapped potential will be the "litmus test" of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
1 October 2015: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported that he is counting on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to “play a constructive role” in making the Paris Climate Change Conference successful. Ban said this during his address to a Ministerial Meeting of the LDCs, and added that unlocking LDCs’ untapped potential will be the “litmus test” of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The ministerial meeting took place on 1 October 2015, in New York, US, on the margins of the 70th UN General Assembly (UNGA) high-level debate.
Ban also said: the LDCs – including Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) and small island developing States (SIDS) – are disproportionately affected by environmental challenges, health emergencies, natural disasters, poverty and hunger, and youth unemployment; the spectrum of financing issues addressed by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) captures the LDCs’ concerns and includes commitments to increase official development assistance (ODA), establish investment promotion regimes for LDCs, and operationalize the technology bank for LDCs by 2017; and the successful outcomes of the UN Sustainable Development Summit and Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) must be followed by a robust, universal climate change agreement.
Ban stressed that agreement in Paris in December “is critical to the global community, especially LDCs, which are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” and he called for strong leadership of the LDCs. [UN Press Release] [UN Secretary-General Remarks]