Better than imagined but worse than necessary, the COP enters its crucial week

COP26 begins its crucial week this Monday. After the parade of leaders and celebrities, the optimism of host Boris Johnson and the pessimism of Greta Thunberg, 194 countries will seek to overcome disagreements that for years have slowed the fight against warming.

At the halfway point of the meeting, the balance is bittersweet. “We have made much more progress on some things than I could have imagined two years ago, but it is far from enough”, consideró Helen Mountford, del World Resources Institute.

The great annual conference of the HIM-HER-IT on the climate, canceled last year by the pandemic and organized from October 31 to November 12 in the Scottish city of Glasgow, registered an avalanche of pompous announcements in its first week.

Countries like Brazil, Argentina and India reinforced their emission reduction targets.

A hundred heads of state and government pledged to stop deforestation by 2030, and another hundred to emit 30% less methane, a gas with 80 times more greenhouse effect than CO2.

Some fifty countries promised to stop using coal to produce electricity and hundreds of private financial institutions offered trillions of dollars in credits.

Has been “a real boost to climate action”Congratulated a spokesman for the Johnson government, which wants to present itself to the world as a champion in the fight against global warming.

Obama to the stand

It is certainly unusual for a climate summit to see so many announcements in its first week, but these can become a dead letter if they are not followed by concrete action.

“This is no longer a climate conference. It is a festival of image washing”Thunberg denounced before the thousands of young people who took to the streets of the city on Friday, followed on Saturday by a human tide of protests in Glasgow and dozens of cities around the world.

Magnet of public opinion as the actors Leonardo Di Caprio and Idris Elba, the musician Robert Del Naja -alias 3D- leader of Massive Attack, or the fashion designer Stella McCartney, who came to Glasgow to express their climate commitment, on Monday it will be Barack Obama’s turn.

The former US president committed his country to the historic Paris Agreement in 2015, which set the world goal of keeping the global temperature below + 2 ° C, and if possible + 1.5 ° Celsius. An ambition that Glasgow must provide with content.

Obama will address the plenary session of the nearly 200 delegations, which will be joined on Monday by the environment ministers to fully enter into the negotiation of issues that have been stranded for years.

“About transparency“, So that everyone can monitor that others do what they promise,” there has been no real progress, “acknowledged a diplomatic source.

“About the common time frame“, So that all countries base their commitments on the same comparable time frames,”we had eight options and now we have nine ”, explains, considering it “Indecipherable to ministers.”

AND “we will not reach the request of some states”, Especially vulnerable countries, so that the reviews of the measures are made annually and not every five years, he added.

“Disappointment”

Another great stumbling block: the functioning of carbon markets, which allow the sale and purchase of rights to emit gases into the atmosphere.

Or simply, its existence, which is opposed by countries like Bolivia.

The commitments for 2030 with which the countries reached Glasgow left the Earth on the path of a warming of + 2.7 ° Celsius, which would lead to chaotic consequences, including droughts, floods, sea level rise and the rise of millions of climate refugees.

Rachel Rose Jackson, from the NGO Corporate Accountability, denounces that rich countries “rush down the fire escape instead of helping put out the fire they started in our only home”, On the historical responsibility of the industrialized nations in the emission of a carbon that already increased the temperature + 1.1 ° Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era.

In 2009, they promised to contribute US $ 100 billion annually to developing nations starting in 2020. But more than a decade later they still haven’t gotten their accounts.

“This first week is a disappointment, most of our concerns have not really been taken into account”Said Ahmadou Sebory Touré, president of the 77 + China Group, which brings together 134 developing and emerging countries.