COP26: in Glasgow, the last chance summit to limit the extent of warming – Les Échos

It is a bomb whose deafening ticking resonates throughout the world and that the States, meeting in Glasgow from Monday within the framework of the COP26, have slim chances of defusing. The crossing of the threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming, beyond which the Earth will turn into a hostile environment for those who inhabit it, has become since the last report published this summer by the IPCC a question of a few years and not more than decades.

Unless, a highly improbable hypothesis, if the negotiators of the 196 parties who approved the Paris climate agreement in 2015 where this red line was set at the end of the century, fail to decide otherwise. They have two weeks to make scientists lie with the force and the credibility of the commitments of their governments.

” I am very worried […]. It is possible that we do not have the agreements which we need, estimated Monday Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, usually of a stainless optimism. In fact, rarely has the avalanche of reports preceding each COP dumped such gloomy forecasts.

According to one of the most recent, the “Emissions Gap Report 2021”, posted on Tuesday on the United Nations Program website for the Environment (UNEP), “the 1.5 objective” in 2100 can now only be reached at the cost of halving global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in eight years. However, the opposite is expected with an expected level of warming of 2.7 degrees by the end of the century, almost twice as much as expected.

This forecast is based primarily on voluntary commitments – NDCs in UN jargon – that each state must make to reduce its GHG emissions as stipulated in the Paris Agreement. Commitments imposed on them to update every five years. It is therefore on the eve of COP26, postponed from 2020 to 2021, that the time for the first assessment came. And it is during this that the States will have to agree on the additional efforts to be made to regain the “1.5” trajectory.

Noticeable absences

There is some bread on a wooden board. As of October 25, 143 states out of the 191 required to comply with this exercise (ie 61% of the planet’s GHG emissions) have made new commitments. China, the world’s largest emitter (27% of the total) officially transmitted its own Thursday to the United Nations, three days before COP26. They take up the objectives of its roadmap, namely to reach its peak of emissions “before 2030” and carbon neutrality “before 2060”. Its president Xi Jinping will not go to Glasgow, a sign, perhaps, that Beijing does not intend to go very far. Russia, which has the same goal of carbon neutrality, will no longer be represented by the Kremlin strongman, Vladimir Putin.

On the other hand, after letting the suspense hang, Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, will come to the COP26, maintaining the hope of a new firm commitment. To date, India, the second biggest polluter on the planet, has not released a new NDC. The other countries with the highest emissions, such as those in the Gulf and Australia, have recommitted themselves, but in a less restrictive manner. As for the United States, if they have gotten up to speed, by posting a target of reducing their GHGs by 50 to 52% by 2030, they will have to make it credible.

To maintain the trajectory towards a warming limited to 1.5 degrees, “ the world would need seven times more ambition ”, warns Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations. And it would take, still according to him, four times more to be compatible with + 2 degrees, the alternative objective of the Paris Agreement.

Add to this that the commitments made are never immune to a downturn. Global fossil fuel production, while expected to start declining immediately, is on the rise again, another UNEP report says . To date, government forecasts for 2030 are more than twice the production compatible with the Paris agreements.

The return of coal

China, which claims to want to limit the use of these energy resources to less than 20% by 2060, has resumed importing coal from Australia. As for the number of coal-fired power stations it has under construction or planned, even reduced, this still represents more than half (55%) of all those which have yet to come out of the ground in the world.

The other big challenge of this COP will be to keep the countries of the South in the loop. Their confidence in the North is eroding. The annual $ 100 billion that they have promised them at the COP in Copenhagen for 2020, to help them cope with the impacts of climate change, should only arrive in full, and in the best case, only. in 2023.

Enough to fuel a feeling of exclusion that the conditions for organizing this COP26 have amply nourished. The health security measures linked to Covid have reduced the numbers of delegations from many countries of the South, preventing a certain number of them from participating in the negotiations on the same footing as the rich countries.

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