Facing an existential threat amid the worsening climate change phenomenon affecting the globe, leaders from low lying nations urged the developed nations to act more forcefully against a warming planet.

The failure by developed economies to effectively curb their greenhouse gas emissions contributes to rising sea levels and especially imperils island and low lying nations at the mercy of water.

"We simply have no ground to cede," Marshall Islands President David Kabua told leaders in a pre-recorded speech at the high-level gathering on Wednesday. "The world simply cannot delay climate ambition any further."

Countries agreed under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the threshold scientists say would head off the worst impacts of warming. To do that, scientists say, the world needs to cut global emissions in half by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050.

"The difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees is a death sentence for the Maldives," President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih told world leaders at UNGA.

Guyana President Irfaan Ali criticized large polluters for not delivering on promises to curb emissions, accusing them of "deception" and "failure" and warning that climate change will kill far more people than the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adding further he said that "We hold out similar hope that the world's worst emitters of greenhouse gases that are affecting the welfare of all mankind will also come to the realization that, in the end, it will profit them little to emerge king over a world of dust".

Small island states and countries with low-lying coastlines, like Guyana, will bear the full brunt of the impending disaster despite being among the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.

"This is not only unfair, it is unjust," he said.

Note : The 38 member states and 22 associate members that the UN has designated as Small Island Developing States  or SIDS are caught in a cruel paradox: they are collectively responsible for less than one per cent of global carbon emissions, but they are suffering severely from the effects of climate change, to the extent that they could become uninhabitable.