COP26: States reach agreement to limit global warming

Published on : 11/13/2021 – 20:57

The 200 countries of the COP26 adopted, Saturday, November 13, an agreement to accelerate the fight against global warming, without ensuring to contain it at 1.5 ° C or respond to requests for assistance from poor countries.

Dubbed the “Glasgow Climate Pact”, the text was adopted after two weeks of trying negotiations, with a hammer blow from the British President of the World Climate Conference, Alok Sharma.

Witnessing the difficulty in reaching this agreement, the president of COP26 said in a voice moved and with tears in his eyes “deeply sorry” for last minute changes introduced on the issue of fossil fuels at the request of China and India. He had earlier estimated that the agreement “inaugurates a decade of growing ambition” in the climate.

On the critical point of limiting temperatures, while the planet is according to the UN on a “catastrophic” trajectory of warming of 2.7 ° C compared to the pre-industrial era, the text calls on member states to increase their reduction commitments more regularly than foreseen in the Paris agreement, starting in 2022.

But with the possibility of adjustments for “particular national circumstances”, a point which has aroused criticism from NGOs on the real ambitions of the text.

Moreover, the compromise found does not ensure compliance with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, limiting warming “well below” 2 ° C and if possible to 1.5 ° C.

But it offers prospects for the British presidency to show success in its goal of seeing Glasgow “keep 1.5 alive”. Experts regularly warn that “every tenth of a degree counts” while disasters linked to climate change are already increasing: floods, droughts or heat waves, with their attendant damage and victims.

“It’s soft, it’s weak”

“It’s soft, it’s weak, and the 1.5 ° C target is barely alive, but there is a signal that the Coal Age is over. And that’s important,” commented Jennifer Morgan, patron of Greenpeace International.

The text also contains a mention, unprecedented at this level, of fossil fuels, the main responsible for global warming and which are not even mentioned in the Paris agreement.

The wording was attenuated over the versions and until the last minute before the adoption in plenary, at the insistence of China and India in particular. The final version calls for “stepping up efforts towards reducing coal without (CO2) capture systems and phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. A “bitter pill to swallow”, but accepted “for the common good”, regretted the representative of Liechtenstein.

After a failure at the last two COPs, it has also succeeded in finalizing the rules for using the Paris Agreement, in particular on the functioning of the carbon markets supposed to help reduce emissions.

No resolution for aid to poor countries

The explosive issue of aid to poor countries, which at one time seemed able to derail the negotiations, did not find a resolution.

Scared by the still unfulfilled promise of the richest to increase their climate aid in the South to $ 100 billion per year from 2020 onwards, the poor countries, the least responsible for global warming but on the front line in the face of its impacts, were asking for funding. specific to the “loss and damage” they are already suffering.

But developed countries, foremost the United States, which fears possible legal consequences, strongly opposed it.

And reluctantly, the poor countries gave in, accepting a continuation of the dialogue so as not to lose the progress on the fight against warming, the effects of which already threaten them directly. While saying “extremely disappointed”.

“It is an insult to the millions of people whose lives are being ravaged by the climate crisis,” commented Teresa Anderson of the NGO ActionAid International.

The face of the global youth climate movement, Greta Thunberg, was no more tender, denouncing on Twitter “a tsunami of greenwashing” in an attempt to pass this Glasgow Pact as “a step in the right direction”.

With AFP