United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has warned in the UN Climate Change secretariat’s annual report that time is running out to avert dangerous global warming and called on nations to accelerate efforts to tackle climate change.

Arguing in the annual document that the landmark Climate treaty secured in Paris in 2015 was “a beginning, not an end”, Mr Guterres said countries now needed to show “greatly increased ambition” in cutting carbon emissions and increasing their resilience to climate impacts.

“Success demands broad-based concerted action from all levels of society, public and private, action coalitions across all sectors and the engagement of all key actors,” he wrote in the report foreword.

“There is no time, nor reason, to delay.”

In a thinly veiled swipe at the administration of United States President Donald Trump’s rationale for quitting the Paris Agreement, Mr Guterres argued the economic case for climate action was now unanswerable.

“The dogma that pollution and high emissions are the unavoidable cost of progress is dead,” he wrote.

“Investing in climate action makes sense for the global environment, improved public health, new markets, new jobs and new opportunities for sustainable prosperity.

“Failing to act will simply consign all of humanity to ever-worsening climate calamity.”

The comments follow a year of mixed success for global climate action.

Renewable energy continues to dominate new energy investment, but greenhouse gas emissions rose last year after being at a standstill for three years.

This has reignited fears it will not be possible to bend the emissions curve in time to stop dangerous levels of warming over the coming decades.

Meanwhile, in the US President Trump has announced intentions to pull out of the Paris Agreement, attempted to dismantle domestic climate policies and taken steps to promote fossil fuel industries both at home and abroad.

In the report the UN insisted progress has been made, with the COP23 summit in Bonn last November delivering vital progress on the rulebook that will govern the Paris Agreement from 2020 onwards.

It also highlighted the launch last year of the UNFCCC’s, first ever Gender Action Plan to boost women’s participation in climate talks, and a new platform to spotlight indigenous and local community climate action.

The UN is also harnessing new technology to boost climate co-operation between nations.

In November heads of government will gather online for the first ever, virtual leaders’ summit for climate change, the 48-strong Climate Vulnerable Forum announced this week.

The meeting, which will take place just after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5 degrees Celsius, will be hosted by the Marshall Islands but will see leaders from around the world dial in to discuss the climate challenge.

The hope is the virtual summit, coupled with a major business-led climate summit in California this September, will help build momentum ahead of this year’s COP24 summit in Poland.

The meeting in Katowice is widely seen as the most significant climate summit since the Paris Agreement was reached.

At the meeting countries will be under mounting pressure to finalise the treaty’s rulebook and start work on bolder domestic climate action plans ahead of it coming into full effect in 2020.

The Full UN reports can be found here.