COP26: Alliance of countries proposes to end the production of fossil fuels

An alliance of countries led by Costa Rica and Denmark announced on Thursday its intention to end gas and oil production, a new initiative during negotiations stalled at COP26 on climate change.

The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) starts with twelve members, including France, Sweden and Portugal, and sub-national territories such as California.

All are committed to stop exploring and producing gas and oil, responsible for most of the carbon emissions that are raising the temperature of the planet.

“We have to start this conversation, we have to see concrete measures. We are hearing the world beyond these walls, ”said the Costa Rican Minister of Environment and Energy, Andrea Meza.

“Promises ring hollow when the fossil fuel industry continues to receive billions in subsidies (…) or when countries continue to build coal plants,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres added later in a ceremony.

Immersed in negotiations

The almost 200 countries present at COP26 are immersed in negotiations to produce a document this Friday that raises ambition and commitments to maintain global warming, ideally at + 1.5ºC, and that inevitably involves radically reducing emissions.

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Oil and gas represent 90% of CO2 emissions.

The Glasgow COP26’s mission is to develop the historic Paris Agreement of six years ago.

The draft is the subject of struggles, for example with a specific mention of fossil fuels that producing countries dislike.

“There are a lot of oil and gas reserves and we need to decide what we are going to do with them. Complex political decisions have to be made, ”the Costa Rican minister explained to the AFP during a pause in negotiations.

Finance, a big obstacle

After presenting the BOGA alliance, the minister returned to her task of coordinating the negotiations and giving coherence to the complex final document of COP26.

The conference should conclude on Friday with a document that also includes the rules of mutual surveillance, transparency, harmonization of dates and the way in which countries present their climate objectives, and even how the losses they suffer are compensated, and who pays for everything. that.

Funding is proving to be a serious stumbling block, as the bracketed draft attests.

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The presidency of the COP divided, as usual, the negotiation by sectors, and commissioned Meza to give coherence to the final text.

“There are a number of emerging economies that can no longer be treated as developing countries and those are unresolved conversations, with a lot of geopolitics. That is what makes, I think, the issue of financing always so complex and it is undoubtedly one of those issues that closes or hinders many of the rooms ”where they are negotiating, explained Meza to the AFP.

“Especially financing for adaptation, which is very important for most countries,” he explained.

Faced with warming, which irreversibly modifies the planet’s climate, policy makers basically have two policies on the table, mitigation (reducing emissions) or adaptation (such as building dams).

The developed world has officially set itself an amount of $ 100 billion annually to help developing countries face the daunting task of cutting their gas emissions, and to adapt to the changes that are coming.

That figure is a base, poor countries insist. And also the Paris Agreement already provided that it had to be renegotiated for after 2025.

“To reach the goal of 1.5 ºC … we know that we have already spent 50% of the carbon budget,” that is, emissions, criticized Diego Pacheco, Bolivian chief negotiator and current spokesman for the so-called Group at a press conference. of Like-Minded Countries (LMDC).

“We are not responsible for the gap” between promises to cut emissions and reality, added the Bolivian, representing dozens of members.

Astronomical figures appear sporadically on the table, the most recent of the order of 1.3 trillion dollars a year, to be spent in equal parts between adaptation and mitigation, according to a proposal from countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

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The vast majority of developing countries complain that little attention is paid to adaptation.

Another controversial chapter, and one of great complexity, is the carbon emission markets, that is, the possibility for countries to exchange quotas of emissions into the atmosphere, or offset them with other types of measures, such as planting trees.

“It has been very complex, but I think there are proposals on the table that make us believe that we will be able to get a good result. I believe that all parties are aware that we cannot continue kicking the ball, so perhaps in this COP, more than in any of the previous ones, we are very close to being able to achieve a result ”in this chapter, the minister told the AFP, during the brief negotiating break. (I)