By María Josefina Arce

The world has its eyes on the U.S. city of New York. The great challenges facing humanity as a whole, such as hunger, poverty and climate change, are in the debates of the seventy-eighth session of the UN General Assembly, which begins on Tuesday.
    
These issues have been at the center of the interventions of the heads of state and government and ministers participating in the high-level segment, in which they have advocated for unity, solidarity and a fairer and more equitable international economic order to face these challenges.
   
The threat posed by climate change to the development and survival of humanity has featured prominently in this new session of the UN General Assembly.
   
The climate crisis "is knocking on our doors, destroying our homes, our cities, our countries, killing and imposing losses and suffering on our brothers and sisters, especially the poorest," said Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
   
This is a reality of today's world. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that the damage done so far is enormous, and global greenhouse gas emissions remain at levels never seen before.
    
The consequences are devastating; increasingly extreme weather events such as heat waves, drought and floods are threatening people's lives and health, their food security and leading to increased poverty and hunger.
    
And in this particularly complex scenario, the big losers are the developing countries. Although they have contributed little to the climate crisis, they must cope with its worst impacts, with fewer resources available to recover from disasters and adapt to climate change.
   
However, the industrialized nations shirk their responsibility and are reluctant to help the poorest. This was denounced at the UN by Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel, when he stated that it is disappointing that the goal of mobilizing no less than 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 as climate finance has not been met.
  
Against this backdrop and in order to reach a consensus on positions and make progress in the implementation of measures and actions, a Summit on Climate Ambition is being held today at the UN, convened by the Secretary General of the international organization, António Guterres.
  
A summit in which the need to help the poorest will also be present, since, as has been highlighted, it is a question of equity and climate justice that requires immediate attention from governments and international financial organizations.