Negotiations at COP26 are about to get a lot tougher
GLASGOW, Scotland — The drumbeat of public and private announcements during the first week of COP26, including big moves on deforestation and methane emissions, is now giving way to a more formal, contentious and political phase, Andrew writes.
Why it matters: The summit’s a key test of whether all countries of the world can work together through a voluntary system to rein in global warming before it worsens more significantly.
Driving the news: A list of the outstanding issues reads like a final exam at a diplomacy school, but they boil down to two things: money and emissions targets, says Nigel Purvis, president and CEO of Climate Advisers, a public policy firm.
- Emissions targets: The success of this COP will rest in part on creating a system to ensure that emissions pledges are made more consistent with Paris Agreement goals.
- Current targets would see global average temperatures overshoot the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious targetof 1.5ºC of warming above preindustrial levels.
- The U.S. and other members of the intergovernmental High Ambition Coalition want another review of targets in 2023 and annually after that.
- That would be a departure from the Paris text, which calls for the next review in 2025.
- Market rules: Ministers and negotiators must navigate a treacherous path to reach an agreement on rules to set up a carbon market, which would see countries and companies pay to reduce emissions by investing in projects elsewhere, in return for emissions reduction credits.
- Some developing nations favor the creation of a small transaction tax in this market to help them adapt to global warming, which may not fly with developed countries.
- Climate finance: With climate disasters mounting and the 1.5-degree goal slipping away, developing countries want additional financing commitments and mechanisms to be written into any Glasgow deal. For them, this is a critical issue, because industrialized countries have failed to meet their pledges.
- Loss and damage: This COP is tackling an issue that has long been treated as a no-go zone in climate negotiations: whether and how wealthy countries, whose emissions have mainly caused the ravages of ongoing climate change, should pay damages to developing nations suffering from their effects.
- So far, the U.S. has acknowledged loss and damage are occurring but has been resistant to go further.
What they’re saying: “In my mind, there’s no way developing countries are letting this conference end without an updating of that pledge; a new target on finance,” Purvis, a former climate negotiator at the State Department, said.
- “The mood among developing countries is sour,” said Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based climate think tank Power Shift Africa, in an email. “Real progress needs to be made on adaptation funding and the setting up of a loss and damage mechanism to address those growing needs.”
-The challenge to building our way out of climate change
Averting catastrophic climate change — while ensuring economic growth for the world — will require renewable energy and carbon removal projects on a massive scale.
- But there’s strong ingrained public resistance to big infrastructure projects, including among many environmentalists, Axios’ Bryan Walsh reports.
Driving the news: On Friday at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it will launch a major research effort to bring the cost of carbon removal below $100 a ton by 2030.
- That’s good news for the climate, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has calculatedthe world may ultimately need to remove 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of CO2 by the end of the century to keep temperature rise below 1.5°C.
- But beyond the scientific challenge of vastly reducing the cost of effective carbon removal — which is currentlyas much as $2,000 per ton — achieving it on a massive scale would require building out an entirely new kind of energy infrastructure.
The catch: The development required for net-zero carbon is increasingly meeting local resistance on the ground, including from people who identify as environmentalists.
Πηγή: axios.com
