Days before the start of COP27, hosted by Egypt in Sharm El-Sheikh, the UN and other bodies issued stark warnings about climate change pledges not being fulfilled and the need to do more to cut polluting emissions.
In a report UN climate experts said current conditions will lead to the earth’s temperature rising by 2.1-2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. The report added that “countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change”, warning of a future marked by more flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and species extinction.
Only 26 of 193 countries that agreed to step up their climate actions in COP26 last year in Glasgow have upgraded their pledges. Though the top two polluters, China and the United States, have taken some action they have not pledged more this year. A stalled climate negotiation between the two of them is not helping global efforts.
Billions in investments that were promised in green energy projects by the US and China are seen by climate experts as “too little too late”, as they note it has been three decades overdue and is not meeting their stated pledges. According to UN climate experts, by 2030 emissions need to have fallen by 45 per cent compared to 2010 levels in order to meet the 2015 Paris climate deal’s 1.5 C goal. But current commitments from governments around the world will in fact increase emissions from the 2010 benchmark by 10.6 per cent by 2030.
In an interview with the BBC, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stressed that the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 C was still within reach, but warned that the current trajectory of countries’ climate commitments was “catastrophic”. “We must absolutely start reducing emissions now,” he said.
In 2015, the landmark Paris Agreement se a goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius rise of the earth’s temperature. It was also agreed that countries would upgrade Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years to achieve that goal by committing to more ambitious plans to cut greenhouse gases. COP26, which was then planned for 2020, was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. It was hosted by the UK last year, where tough negotiations yielded little.
UN experts warn that this path is definitely leading to an increase in catastrophic climate impacts. With the warming of Earth’s atmosphere, tens of millions more people will be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding, while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants will go extinct.
The weather and other dire ecological consequences are one thing, but there will also be direct and indirect health impacts. Last week, the renowned science publication The Lancet published a report highlighting the growing threat of fossil fuels and carbon emissions to human health. It raised concerns not only about the direct health consequences of rising temperatures like heat-related mortality, pregnancy complications and cardiovascular disease, but also indirect costs that include the effects that drier soil could have on malnutrition and how a changing climate might expand habitats suitable to mosquitoes that carry dengue fever or malaria, and the pathogens that cause diseases like cholera and valley fever.
Research by the World Resources Institute suggests that the world needs to curb emissions six times faster by 2030 than current trends to meet the 1.5 C warming cap. Another UN report looked at longer term and “net-zero” mid-century goals put forward by dozens of countries. It concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from those countries would be 68 per cent lower by 2050 than they were in 2019, if all strategies were fully implemented – not even close to zero.
Developed countries are the biggest polluters. In a speech on Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations last week, President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry said, “we all know the top 20 economies are responsible for 80 per cent of emissions.” He called on those 20 countries to strengthen their pledges this year at COP27, adding, “that’s what people agreed to do... It takes all to get the job done.”
But the gap between pledges and actual policy in practice has been widening since early last year. The energy crisis, that started then, was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia. Sky-rocketing inflation, higher interest rates and rising cost of living as well as the looming global economic recession are used by many developed countries as excuses to renege on their climate change promises. Stark examples are the UK and Brazil, who not only didn’t upgrade pledges but even neglected their NDCs. The excuse is a deteriorating economy.
Since summer last year, many developed countries in Europe and elsewhere reversed decommissioned coal power stations to face power shortages and rising natural gas prices. Projects to build more offshore wind farms stalled, and existing turbines didn’t have good wind due to changing weather patterns.
With the need for increased economic activity to avoid recession or make it shorter, countries put aside climate change “constraints” as some officials call their pledges to decarbonise. That will make negotiations in Sharm El-Sheikh even tougher than in Glasgow last year.
But the writing is on the wall. A report by the UN’s 195-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of climate impacts and vulnerabilities, concluding that “time has nearly run out to ensure a livable future for all.”
*A version of this article appears in print in the 3 November, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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