US President Joe Biden called for “more countries to join.”
Dozens of world leaders gathered at the major UN climate conference on Tuesday announced plans to cut their emissions of the highly polluting methane and end deforestation by 2030, seeking to kickstart complicated negotiations.
On the third day of COP26 in the Scottish city of Glasgow, the leaders, invited to participate in the hope that their presence will boost the subsequent dialogue, agreed to cut their methane emissions by 30% at the end of this decade.
This “is one of the gases that we can reduce more quickly,” underlined the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, along with the president of the United States, Joe Biden, recalling that said gas is responsible for “about 30%” accumulated global warming since the industrial revolution.
The pledge was signed by more than 80 nations, including half of the top 30 methane emitters, and Biden called for “more countries to join.”
Methane has a greenhouse effect 80 times more powerful than CO2 and its sources, such as open-pit coal mines and livestock, have received relatively little attention so far.
Argentina, a large producer of beef, joined the promise by emphasizing “the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities” between developed countries, responsible for the vast majority of emissions in the last century, and developing countries.
“The contribution of our agro-bioindustry to world food security should not be excluded from the climate negotiations so as not to generate new forms of protectionism”, defended its president Alberto Fernández.
And he asked that the payment of part of his enormous foreign debt be linked to “the essential investments in green infrastructure that Argentina needs.”
– Complicated negotiations –
Canceled last year due to the pandemic, the COP26’s mission is to develop the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set the main objective of limiting global warming to + 1.5ºC.
However, the negotiations are announced complicated.
On Monday, India, the world’s fourth-largest emitter of CO2, announced that it does not expect to reach carbon neutrality until 2070. This highly anticipated announcement represents a two-decade delay from most countries.
The methane pact was the second of two major announcements made in Glasgow by heads of state and government.
The first was the promise of billions of dollars in public and private funding to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030.
“Our forests are also nature’s way of capturing carbon, pulling CO2 out of our atmosphere,” said Biden.
“We have to address this issue [de la deforestación] with the same seriousness as the decarbonization of our economies ”, he added during an event dedicated to forests and land use.
According to the NGO Global Forest Watch, only in 2020 the destruction of primary forests increased by 12% compared to the previous year despite the economic stoppage due to the pandemic and in Brazil, the cradle of the largest lung on the planet, caused a 9.5% increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
In this context, from Brazil to China, passing through Russia, Indonesia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the leaders of more than 100 countries, which account for 85% of the world’s forests, signed the Glasgow Declaration on Tuesday.
Its actions include supporting activities in developing countries such as restoring degraded lands, fighting forest fires and defending the rights of indigenous communities.
And they will be financed with $ 12 billion of public money contributed by 12 countries between 2021 and 2025, plus $ 7.2 billion of private investment by more than 30 global financial institutions.
“It is very important to be carbon neutral but it is also very important to be positive with nature,” said President Iván Duque of Colombia, a country occupied 52% by tropical rainforest and 35% by Amazonian land, which promised to declare 30% of its territory as a protected area in 2022.
It is eight years ahead of schedule, “because we have to act now,” he launched.
Environmental groups denounced the end of deforestation in 2030 as too late and Greenpeace called it a “green light for another decade of forest destruction.” (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
