COP26 and the expectations of an opportunity that experts affirm should not be missed

As a last chance to take action in time some see the next summit of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2021 (COP26), which will bring together world leaders such as the presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and of several countries in Europe.

This week thousands of people demonstrated in Swiss cities to ask the governments of the world for concrete actions in the fight against climate change, a few days before the COP26 conference, which will be held this year in Glasgow, Scotland, between the 31 October and November 12.

Nelson Baldeón, consultant in energy geopolitics, He mentions that basically humanity already has to fully agree on the use of energy based on hydrocarbons, because the issue of the increase in temperature of the planet is going to affect climate change much more. Thus, This summit cannot fail, but everything will be known at the end.

He adds that it is important that leaders like Biden attend because the role of the powers is important. Although it is expected that they will not go to the photo, because it is even developed countries, which are the ones that pollute the most, that climate change hits the most.

Biden already promised in April that the United States would double its global financial aid to help developing countries tackle climate change, and at the last UN Assembly, that it would double its contribution to about $ 5.6 billion. dollars annually, a figure that has been considered very insufficient by environmental organizations.

Frances Colón, Senior Director of International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress, comments that the expectation is that many countries do present more ambitious goals than those set out for the Paris Agreement (2016), since science has said that they are needed to limit global warming to only 1.5 ° Celsius.

“Many countries have already committed to bigger goals and more countries are going to announce others reaching the summit (..). I think what the report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change) tells us that it is a very urgent time for the climate crisis, that we are running out of time and that we don’t have much flexibility to make mistakes and be shy, “says Colón, who adds that in the case of the United States, the president’s representative for climate change, John Kerry, has been traveling through the world to get the best possible results at this summit.

For the specialist, these days will be the right space to discuss immediate actions, to work on the adaptation processes of the countries, the financing that many of them need to make the transition to clean energy economies. Conversations that will follow after the summit.

The countries that are being asked for more action and commitment are the United States and China, however, the latter will not have its president, Xi Jinping, at the summit.

The challenges of COP26 are numerous, because as the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) stated in a report this week, the world’s governments plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, collects EFE.

However, the revival can turn into an opportunity as well.

“In the United States, the COVID recovery cannot be a setback and try to rebuild economies to the way they were before the pandemic. The work that needs to be done, as President Biden says, is to rebuild better than we were and for that we have to make those transitions to clean energy, this is the moment, there is no more time, ”says Colón.

The British Government announced that it will invest around 9.4 billion dollars in new projects to promote the use of sustainable means of transport in cities and regions of England.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicated before COP26 that an agreement was reached between several countries that allows to prohibit the granting of export credits to conventional coal-fired power plants.

An order from the Amazon

While, Eduardo Pichilingue, coordinator in Peru of the Cuencas Sagradas Initiative, He comments that the COP summits are an important space, but they have not had a decisive action in the past, especially in developed countries that must make the strongest decisions. But this time from the initiative they go with a great expectation that the proposals of the indigenous organizations will be taken into account.

“This proposal to sustain and protect the Amazon, and that the people who own the territory do it, those who live there and who have scientifically proven that they are the ones that have best protected those territories, those forests, ”says Pichilingue.

He states that from their organizations they saw that the majority of participants go with complaints and very negative views of what the future of the Amazon and the planet in general is, and in this case they leave with a clear and fresh vision of what can be the future of this area if governments and society in general decide to break the the status quo. Additionally, in this way, a form of survival and dignity would be given to the people of these territories. Something that could be replicated in other areas of the planet.

Pichilingue also indicates that a proposal of the Amazonian indigenous organizations is to 80 by 20, which calls for 80% of the Amazon to be protected by 2025.

Benito Bonilla, from the Pachamama Foundation, which is also part of the Cuenca Sagrada Initiative, He comments that this binational initiative (between indigenous people from Ecuador and Peru) seeks a post-extractive society and opens the space for bioentrepreneurship projects in the Amazon that can provide resources for the energy transition.

Bonilla adds that after 26 meetings of the COP, the answers are no longer so much in what governments can do, but in the proposals that organizations and indigenous peoples around the world can make to raise a debate that offers answers to global warming . (I)