COP26 climate summit: no country has delivered on promises to improve emission reduction plans

To Adam Vaughan

Sebastian Mernild’s presentation was anything but punchy. As more than 40 of his nations met in Copenhagen last week to discuss progress beyond his COP26 climate summit in 2021, a glaciologist at the University of Southern Denmark told his ministers with a jagged red line indicating rising global temperatures. I said hello. He reminded them that emissions were still increasing. And he said their goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require “rapid, deep and sustained” emissions cuts.

“They all know scientifically what we’re up against with 1.5°C,” says Mernild. Whether they act on that knowledge is another matter. Six months after his COP26 agreement in Glasgow, it is not clear whether countries have delivered on their promises.

COP26 President Alok Sharma said today that it would be “tremendous self-harm” if world leaders failed to deliver on their promises. Speaking in Glasgow, he said he could understand why the war and cost of living crisis in Ukraine had pushed action to reduce emissions out of the limelight, but said, “Climate change is a chronic danger. ‘ reminded the audience. Couldn’t ignore it.

Sharma added that Russia’s aggression showed that “climate security is energy security and we must cut our dependence on fossil fuels.”

One of the key promises of the Glasgow Climate Accord was this year that 196 countries would “reconsider and strengthen” their plans to limit their emissions by 2030. Without a stronger action plan, the goal of keeping warming below 1.5°C will not be met. arrival.

Sharma said the UK government is looking at ways to strengthen its 2030 national climate plan, but to date no country has formally submitted blueprints beyond what they had promised before or at COP26. There is none.

People close to the UN climate negotiation process say it is unlikely that we will see any action on these plans until we are well near the next big climate summit, COP27, in November. It is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, raising hopes that at least the host country will come up with new plans. Moreover, climate diplomacy officials believe the best we can hope for in the revised plan is tougher emissions targets for individual sectors such as forests and cars, rather than more comprehensive targets.

Pete Betts of the London School of Economics, a former leading climate negotiator for the European Union and the United Kingdom, says large developed countries have already set ambitious targets ahead of COP26. increase. The US has pledged to cut emissions in half by 2030.

“Unfortunately it was clear that in Glasgow we were unlikely to see these revisions. [to climate plans in 2022]Because if they did, they would have done it in Glasgow. Unfortunately, there are all indications that it won’t happen in Sharm el-Sheikh,” says Betts. There are no signs that Egypt is pressuring other countries to raise their ambition, as the UK did prior to COP26.

Carne Ross of the think tank E3G, referring to the possibility of a tougher climate plan, says, “There seems to be very little political energy going into it right now.” “I think the big problem on the climate front at the moment is Ukraine. It takes the political attention away from everything else,” says Ross.

US Special Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry said last week that aggression is no excuse to abandon climate action, For example, by building coal-fired power plants. “The important thing is not to give in to the idea that ‘Oh, Ukraine has changed everything and now we can’t do the infrastructure we decided on a while ago,'” he said.

One of the bright spots this year is that Germany’s new government, formed by a coalition government including Germany’s Green Party, will use its presidency of the G20 major global economic group to push for continued action on climate change. is doing Another positive possibility is that Australia and Brazil can elect governments that create bold new plans. “I think that’s the hope,” says Ross.

Some progress has also been made on the negotiations on ‘loss and damage’ promised at COP26. This could be a first step for rich countries to compensate poor countries for climate impacts, said Salim Rukh of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka. Bangladesh.

For other promises made in Glasgow, the news is even worse. Nearly 200 countries have pledged to undertake a “coal phase-out”. Coal production is expected to rise in China and the United States this year. India is also easing environmental regulations to expand coal mining to meet power demand amid climate change and heat waves caused by coal burning.

Little progress has been made on a series of flashy “side deals” made at COP26, including over 100 countries pledging to stop deforestation by 2030. In Brazil, one of his signatories, deforestation in the Amazon hit its worst level since 2016 in April. , according to satellite imagery. “Illegal loggers and land grabbers are taking advantage of the last years of the current government,” said Andre Freitas of Greenpeace Brazil.

We are less than six months away from COP27 and we still don’t have an official website. Jim Ski of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently said that by the time thousands of delegates arrive in Sharm el-Sheikh, the 1.5°C target will ‘go away’ without a stronger national climate plan. “Despite the resort’s bright reputation, its prospects are becoming increasingly bleak.

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