COP26: Agreement on ‘imperfections’ for the climate

LAST UPDATE: 23.55

COP26 today approved the “Glasgow Agreement” in order to speed up the fight against climate warming, but without ensuring that it will be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius or respond to requests for help from poor countries.

The final adoption of the text came after two weeks of painstaking negotiations and last-minute changes made by China and India on fossil fuel energy.

THE Alok Sarma, Britain’s environment minister and chairman of COP26, told the Guardian that the agreement is “incomplete”, but shows “consent and support”. He said: “I hope we can leave this conference together having achieved something important for the people and the planet together as a whole.”

THE European Union said it “wanted to go even further” in moves to phase out carbon in the draft text, according to bloc negotiator Frans Timmermans.

Characterize it proposal of India change the wording of the agreement and call for a “gradual reduction” instead of a “phasing out” of fossil fuels as “further disappointment”.

The news of reaching an agreement was initially announced by High Representative of China for the climate. Speaking through an interpreter, Xie Zenua told a Reuters reporter: “We have an agreement” and signaled by raising his thumb.

Representatives of the United States and the European Union met with their Chinese and Indian counterparts at the UN Climate Conference to discuss the details of an agreed phasing out of coal.

Negotiations were held until the last minute between critical players in the COP26 talks, as well as the British hosts of the conference were pushing for an agreement which could keep alive the goal of the international community to limit the increase of the Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

More than 200 countries around the world took part in the negotiations. Representatives of the countries tried for several hours to find common ground for the phasing out of coal, fossil fuels and the financing of poorer countries.

What the text says

At a critical juncture in global warming, according to the United Nations, the United States is on a “catastrophic” overheating of 2.7 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era. than provided for in the Paris Agreement from 2022.

But with the possibility of modification due to “special national circumstances”, a point that provoked NGO criticism for the real ambitions of the text.

Moreover, the compromise found does not ensure that the objectives of the Paris Agreement are met, limiting overheating “well below” to 2 degrees Celsius, if possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But it offers prospects that allow the British presidency to show success in its goal of seeing Glasgow “keep the 1.5 points alive”. Experts regularly warn that “every tenth degree counts” while the catastrophes associated with climate change are already multiplying: floods, droughts or heat waves, accompanied by damage and casualties.

“She is relaxed, she is weak, and the 1.5 degree Celsius target is just alive, but there is a sign of the end of the carbon era. And that’s important,” said Jennifer Morgan, head of Greenpeace International.

The text also includes a reference, unprecedented at this level, of fossil fuels, which are mainly responsible for global warming and are not even mentioned in the Paris Agreement.

The wording was tempered in successive versions of the text until the last moment before the text was adopted by the plenary, with the insistence mainly of China and India. The final version calls for “intensified efforts to reduce coal without carbon sequestration systems and to exit ineffective fossil fuel subsidies”. A “pill that is difficult to swallow”, but which was accepted “for the common good”, said the representative of Liechtenstein.

Reuters: No solution found for aid to poor countries

Following the failure of the last two COPs, this one in Glasgow managed to get the final touches on the rules of use of the Paris Agreement, mainly for the operation of the carbon markets that are considered to help reduce emissions.

The explosive aid package for poor countries, which at one point seemed to be able to derail the negotiations, has not been resolved.

Made by the promise that rich countries still do not keep bringing climate aid to the South to $ 100 billion a year by 2020, poor countries, which are least responsible for global warming but at the forefront of its effects , required a special funding for “losses and losses” which already exist.

But developed countries, at the forefront of which the United States, fearing possible legal repercussions, have strongly opposed.

And despite their will, the poor countries retreated, accepting a continuation of the dialogue in order not to lose progress in the fight against overheating, the consequences of which are already threatening them. Stating “extremely disappointed”.

“It’s an insult to the millions of people whose lives have been devastated by the climate crisis,” said Teresa Anderson of ActionAid International.

A. Guterres: “Climate catastrophe still knocks on the door”

“Climate catastrophe is still knocking on the door,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned after concluding an agreement today at COP26 in Glasgow.

The global climate conference has resulted in “welcome steps forward, but that is not enough,” the UN secretary-general said in a statement.

Citing the goals “that we did not achieve at this conference”, he mainly mentions “the end of fossil fuel subsidies, the exit from coal, the setting of a price for coal” and financial assistance to the poorest countries.

“The texts adopted are a compromise. They reflect the interests, the situation, the contradictions and the phase in which the political will is in the world today (…) Unfortunately, the collective political will was not enough to overcome deep contradictions.” reports.

“It’s time to move to ’emergency’ mode,” he said, adding that the current commitments on emissions reductions did not meet the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. with the pre-industrial era, and even below the ‘ideal’ target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

According to Reuters, Guardian