COP26 President Says Glasgow’s Climate Goals Harder To Achieve Than Paris’s

COP26 President Alok Sharma says time is running for countries to commit to climate action, but consensus on critical issues has yet to be reached.

Speaking to a group of international reporters at a press conference organized by Covering the weather now, Sharma laid out the priorities for the United Nations climate conference that will begin in Glasgow next week. The main goals are to mobilize $ 100 billion in climate finance that rich countries pledged to developing countries, finalize the rules for a global carbon market (called Article 6 of the Paris Agreement), and encourage countries to adopt climate targets. emission reductions that could limit global emissions. heating to 1.5 C.

“What we are trying to achieve in Glasgow is in many ways more difficult than in Paris,” Sharma said.

This is because years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, there is still disagreement on how Article 6 should work, climate finance is being significantly delayed, and every credible climate forecast shows that the planet is hurtling into an era of collapse. climate with the exit ramps to a secure future that passes quickly.

“After six years, we still have some of those tough questions to answer, and we’re essentially in the last half hour of the exam,” Sharma said.

Sharma said some areas of agreement were emerging, but declined to offer details before the conference to avoid tipping the negotiations one way or another.

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“It is about generating consensus,” he emphasized.

The United Nations conference on climate change, which has been held since 1995, also known as COP, short for Conference of the Parties, brings together politicians, scientists, environmental activists and climate experts to negotiate agreements to reduce warming. global. This year, COP26 will take place at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 12.

The event has been called the “last hope” to meet the global target of the Paris Agreement, and it is the first COP in which countries are expected to propose more ambitious targets to reduce emissions since Paris was signed.

Canada already unveiled its revised Paris target, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), earlier this year when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the country’s emissions target would drop 30% below 2005 levels. by 2030, to 40 to 45%.

Caroline Lee, a senior research associate at the Canadian Institute for Climate Options, said it was good that Canada increased its ambition, but independent analysis has shown that the goal is not yet aligned with meeting global climate goals. In fact, the independent Climate Action Tracker found that Canada’s updated target is in line with a catastrophic warming of 4 C, much higher than the 1.5 C agreed in Paris.

“It’s great that we’ve raised the ambition of our mitigation targets, but it’s still not enough, and I would say the exact same thing when it comes to climate finance,” Lee said.

Earlier this year, Canada Announced it would double its international climate finance from $ 2.65 billion to $ 5.3 billion over the next five years, or just over $ 1 billion a year. It also said it would increase the amount of that money given in grants from 30 percent to 40 percent, which equates to roughly $ 424 million that will be awarded annually with no expectation that it will be repaid.

Canada has been tasked with helping close the climate finance gap, giving the country a huge role in the COP negotiations. That also presents an opportunity for Canada to increase climate finance to its fair share, often calculated in about $ 4 billion annually.

Lee said the delay by rich countries in delivering on the $ 100 billion climate finance promise, which was supposed to arrive in 2020 but will take years to arrive, has real consequences for developing nations because, to varying degrees, countries will depend on that money. to reduce your decarbonization costs, adding that late arrival has confidence-building implications.

“The longer that goes by without developed countries fulfilling this promise, the greater the risk we run of eroding trust and goodwill between countries in these negotiations,” he said, calling these the critical ingredients for the success of the the negotiations.

“Canada should use its diplomatic influence to ensure that countries honor this commitment,” he said.

Despite expectations, Costa Rica and Denmark will launch the Beyond the Oil and Gas Alliance at COP26, and a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty gaining traction, both Lee and Sharma said they did not expect fossil fuels to be a central part of the formal COP negotiations in Glasgow.

Although important commitments around fossil fuels are expected at COP26, these announcements are independent of formal negotiations. Still, the Canadian delegation shouldn’t ignore them, Lee says.

“The non-proliferation treaty, for example, I think underscores this notion that a transition is taking place globally,” he said.

“Canada needs to look carefully at what the real prospects are for continued oil and gas production in a net zero world and then look at how our national policies might or might not be in line … with that future.”

The latest report from the International Energy Agency, published earlier this month, predicts for the first time that oil demand will decline in all scenarios considered. Depending on the world’s climate ambitions, the rate at which it will decline varies, according to the IEA, but if the world is aiming to keep global warming at 1.5 C, demand has to fall now.

John Woodside / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada National Observer