We can intuit when a summit is not going to be a success before it takes place. The United Nations conferences on climate change (COP) are political summits, for politicians. The agreements to be reached at these summits are far-reaching and should be legally binding, requiring arduous political negotiations in the years before they take place.
The covid-19 pandemic and Brexit (the organizing country of COP26 is the United Kingdom) seem to have relegated the COP to a second term in view of the results obtained. It gives the impression that it was arrived without the homework done.
When a country takes its commitments seriously and makes far-reaching decisions in the very long term, it brings them before a COP to its parliament. Angela Merkel did it in September 2019 before COP25 held in Madrid. The German parliament approved a shock plan against climate change and its financing.
Joe Biden tried it a few weeks ago with the most ambitious plan in American history against climate change, but it was not approved in your congress. Had it succeeded, COP26 might have been more successful.
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Spain has taken an important step before the summit by approving the Climate Change and Energy Transition LawAlthough many have described it as unambitious in terms of meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
Insufficient commitments
The non-attendance of major players such as the presidents of Russia and China, countries that are leaders in greenhouse gas emissions, sent a clear message about their intentions and cooled the possibility of a successful summit.
As seen in the approved text, countries’ commitments are well below what scientists and the latest IPCC report They suggest not to lead the planet towards an unflattering climate future.
The particular interests of several States have prevailed over the collective ones, lowering or not directly reaching the objectives set for this summit. For example, China and India managed to change the final text from “eliminating” the use of coal to “gradually reducing” its use. Reducing, not eliminating, the use of coal is carte blanche to continue as before and increase emissions. This is in line with countries that do not plan to achieve net zero emissions in 2050, and postpone it until 2060 (Russia, China) or 2070 (India)
Non-legally binding agreements
The agreements reached to halt deforestation in 2030, reduce methane emissions and the use of coal, or on the financing of green industries and technologies instead of fossil fuel industries, have not been endorsed by all countries and are not legally binding. That is, countries or companies do not have to comply with them, and, if their government changes, they can simply ignore or reverse them (remember Donald Trump). They are agreements in the right direction and hopeful, but not very ambitious and credible. The positive point is that it seems that an agreement has been reached on the regulation of the carbon market that resolves Article 6 of the Paris agreement.
But the real success of the summit would have been to achieve the proposed goals for global decarbonization in 2050 and not to exceed 1.5 ℃ of global average temperature by the end of the century, to secure the promised financing for the adaptation to climate change of the countries in developing pathways that are suffering the consequences and, in the end, rowing all countries in the same direction to avoid climate disaster. It is urgent to get it. The last report Regarding the global carbon budget, he estimates that we have 11 more years left burning coal at the current rate to limit global warming to 1.5 ℃ with a 50% probability.
No wonder Young and not so young they stand before the doors of parliaments criticizing the lack of ambition and concreteness. The credibility of politicians has once again been greatly affected, and they will have to improve a lot and make fait accompli policies to regain it.
Regardless of what happened at COP26, let us remember that all of us can contribute to reducing emissions: the small actions of many become great actions of all.
This article is part of the coverage of The Conversation on COP26, the Glasgow climate conference.
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David Vieites, Senior Scientist, National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC)
This article was originally published on The Conversation. read the original.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx