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Goals not met
John Kerry, US Special Envoy for Climate Issues, at the wrap-up plenary meeting in Glasgow stated something like this: “There is some discomfort. Well, if the negotiations are good, all parties feel uncomfortable. These were good negotiations. ” By discomfort, he most likely did not mean many hours of queues at the entrance, antique restrictions and not even heating shutdown in recent hours (what an irony to conclude a meeting on global warming!), and the complexities that arise every time countries need to agree on something other than “expressing concern”.
Negotiations on the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were of particular importance: by this point, developed countries had to bring the volume of “green” financing for developing countries to $ 100 billion per year. Achieve this goal set at the failed 2009 Copenhagen summit, failed: Taking into account additional statements in Glasgow, countries will probably be able to reach the required indicator by 2022.
Even six years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, countries had to clarify their national goals for climate mitigation and adaptation to climate change. By calculations Climate Watch, more than 150 countries, which are responsible for 81.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, presented new targets. Not all goals, however, turned out to be more ambitious than the previous ones.
The tone for the talks was set by a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the first volume of which was presented by scientists in August. After UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres the report on the physical foundations of climate change came to be called “a wake-up call for humanity” because it spoke of the unprecedented human impact on the environment.
One of the main pragmatic tasks of the Glasgow talks was the completion of the so-called rules for the implementation of the Paris Agreement – additional agreements necessary for the market and non-market climate mitigation mechanisms laid down in it to work, as expected, after 2020 (and the negotiators coped with it). At the same time, the gap between the desired and the actual in terms of climate mitigation measures remains very large, and the rate of the process remains glacial (and, unfortunately, if glaciers can accelerate as warming progresses, this process is not very). At the same time, the longer countries postpone these measures, the greater the need for adaptation to climate change will be, and it is still difficult to agree on support for this. And so far, little in the 26th negotiating session indicates that, say, by the 46th session, the problem will be resolved or at least taken under control.
With Biden, but without Putin and Xi
In recent years, the organizers prefer to start with the summit of the leaders of the countries, and not end with it, as it was, for example, in Copenhagen – including that loud statements and their authors help, and not interfere with rather complicated technical diplomacy in recent days and session hours. At the summit of leaders in Glasgow at the invitation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as a result gathered 120 heads of state, including US President Joe Biden (the heads of Russia, China and Brazil did not attend the summit, although the Russian delegation itself was unusually large).
The outcome of the summit of leaders was multiple declarations, including a global agreement to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 (by which Russia did not join) and an agreement on forest conservation (in which Russia will participate). Also, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi announcedthat the country plans to achieve carbon neutrality, that is, reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to the amount absorbed by oceans and forests by 2070. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, India is in fourth place after China, the US and the EU, and its energy is heavily dependent on coal, so the new high-profile target in Glasgow was rather welcomed.
This and other statements by the heads of state allowed analysts to update assessments of how far humanity is from achieving the goal of the Paris Agreement – to limit the growth of the global average temperature of the planet from pre-industrial levels to two, or better, 1.5 degrees Celsius (now already at around 1.1 degrees).
The International Energy Agency, having put together absolutely every statement, including voluntary targets like reducing methane emissions, got the trajectory of the temperature rise by 1.8 degrees. A more conservative approach of the Climate Action Tracker project, taking into account specific short-term goals, gives the result is 2.4 degrees – above the limit that will avoid the most serious consequences of climate change. Before the Glasgow conference and related announcements United Nations Environment Program assessed the temperature increase inherent in the climate policy of 2.7 degrees.
They called things by their proper names, but they did not give money
No one expected a new Paris Agreement from Glasgow, but at least one historical event did take place there: in a document with which absolutely all negotiators must agree, to surprise activists appeared the words “Fossil fuels” and “coal” (they are not in the same Paris agreement). Despite the fact that it is the use of fossil fuels that accounts for most of the anthropogenic contribution to climate change – along with, for example, agriculture or deforestation – the very need for consensus has previously prevented any mention of them in a negative context.
Outcome document calls on countries to abandon ineffective fossil fuel subsidies: although the G20 countries agreed to do so back in 2009, shortly before the Glasgow conference, the International Monetary Fund countedthat in 2020, some forms of direct and indirect support for the extraction and use of fossil fuels accounted for $ 5.9 trillion. And India at the last moment insisted on editing in one word: complete failure (phase-out) changed a gradual reduction (phasedown) of coal-fired generation without special measures to reduce its impact on the climate.
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