80 countries ready to step up on climate: UN

(United Nations) – About 80 countries have signaled that they are willing to scale up their commitment to cut carbon emissions under the Paris agreement to combat climate change, the UN climate envoy said.

Under the landmark deal, countries agreed to announce by 2020 new efforts to strengthen their national plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to limit global temperature rise.

UN climate envoy Luis Alfonso de Alba told journalists that “80 is the number of countries (from) which we have already received a signal that they are willing” to enhance their plans.

“But it doesn´t mean that they are willing to do that to the scale we need,” he added.

The United Nations is pushing for stronger action on climate change in the face of new scientific data showing that current efforts fall well short of the goal of containing global warming.

“We need to step up ambition quite radically. We are not talking about a small incremental approach, but rather a quite drastic increase,” said De Alba.

A total of 197 parties have signed the Paris agreement, of which 186 have ratified it.