As global carbon dioxide emissions reportedly reached new highs, representatives from hundreds of national and subnational governments, companies, and civil society organizations gathered in New York for the Climate Summit convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 23 September 2014. The summit was intended to raise political momentum towards the adoption of a new climate agreement in 2015 and seemingly managed to infuse climate diplomacy with fresh energy.Several States announced national actions to address climate change, as well as increased contributions to climate finance, most notably China and the European Union. The summit furthermore saw a host of multilateral and multi-stakeholder announcements on actions to address climate change clustered around eight themes: agriculture; cities; energy; financing; forests; industry; resilience; and transportation. For the purposes of BENELEX, the most interesting developments were the adoption of the New York Declaration on Forests and the launch of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. Read complete blog post by Annalisa Savaresi from the BENELEX Project of the University of Edinburgh here.
