COP26 is over. But two weeks later the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the critical threshold set in the 2015 Paris agreement remains in limbo.
The pledges on emission reductions made in Glasgow fell gravely short. As expected governments bickered over payments for loss and damage from climate impacts, provisions on phasing out coal and cutting greenhouse emissions. Thanks to China and India, the “Glasgow climate pact” agreed to phase down unabated coal power and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.
The outcome of COP26, just like previous climate summits is profoundly disappointing. Even as weak and meek as the Glasgow climate pact is, there is no clear mechanism for enforcing the non-binding agreements. Moreover, some of what is considered breakthroughs like commitment to making climate-smart, sustainable agriculture widely adopted by farmers everywhere is at best unrealistic.
Some argue that the only good thing out of Glasgow is that the 1.5-degree Celsius commitment is alive, not dead albeit with a weak pulse. The hard work of getting governments to honour their commitments and agree to a transparent process of monitoring must begin now.
For example, what will it take to make clean technology affordable and accessible worldwide by 2030? Similarly, how do we make affordable and renewable low carbon hydrogen globally available? Who needs to do what, where and when and for whom?
Granted, the Glasgow Climate Pact is the first-ever negotiated climate agreement to deliberately plan to reduce coal power generation and phase out fossil fuel subsidies.
But as expected, the wealthy nations, China and India are not ready to invest in accelerated decarbonisation of their economies. Is Brazil or Indonesia or the DR Congo committed to reversing deforestation? Oil and gas companies are in no hurry to retreat from their core business.
Hence, we are still on a path toward a planet that will be warmer by 2.4 degrees by 2100. This sets the stage for vicious storms, wildfires, droughts and sea-level rise and the attendant social and economic upheaval.
But there is some hope.
A coalition of the world’s largest investors, banks and insurers who collectively control $130 trillion in assets pledged on the sidelines of Glasgow to use their capital to hasten progress toward net zero emission targets in their investments by 2050.
The text in the Glasgow Climate Pact on financing for adaptation and mitigation is patently innocuous and unbinding on wealthy and developing nation parties. As a response to climate finance, the Glasgow Climate Pact merely emphasises the need to mobilise finance from all sources and notes with deep regret that the goal to mobilise $100 billion per year by 2020 in the context of mitigation actions is yet to be met.
According to Prof Jeffery Sachs of Columbia University, the failure of rich, industrialised countries to mobilise global financing of climate transformation, especially mitigation, adaptation and losses and damages, is the single greatest weakness of the Glasgow climate summit.
What happens between now and COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt?
