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Outside In | After 27 years of failed climate conferences, the COP process clearly needs to change
- The COP27 talks in Egypt ended with yet more dodged commitments, and there is now a sense that these mega meetings are not fit for purpose
- Perhaps real agreements on climate action, driven by formal scientific guidance, should be made away from the media glare, to avoid grandstanding
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COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh was supposed to be the conference of implementation. Instead, it will be remembered for two weeks of procrastination. Most of the 45,000 participants watched on, frustrated and angry as global leaders postured and wilfully sidestepped hard commitments that might put meaningful brakes on global warming.
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The main “success” – an agreement by rich countries to set up a “loss and damages” fund to help poor countries already being devastated by climate change – was arm-twisted after all deadlines had passed, but without any agreement on who will contribute to the fund, or how much.
The commitments made during COP26 in Glasgow to end coal-mining, provide a firm timetable for an end to fossil fuels, set more effective carbon trading rules, and end fossil fuel subsidies, were left glaringly unanswered – perhaps inevitably, given the presence of over 600 lobbyists for the fossil-fuel industry.
Ditto the road map to “net zero”. Instead of being able to declare that carbon emissions are edging down, last month’s UN’s Climate Synthesis report calculated that after all the contributions to achieving net zero by the 196 signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement were added up, emissions are still rising.
It says we will be emitting 53.4 gigatonnes (GT) of CO2 by 2025 – up 53.7 per cent from 1990, 12.6 per cent up from 2010, and despite the Covid-19 recession, up 1.6 per cent from 2019. Instead of being on track to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, climate scientists say we will be lucky to stay the right side of 2 degrees.
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The mood in Sharm el-Sheikh was that if, after 27 COP meetings since COP1 in Berlin in 1995, we are still unable to secure firm commitments from global leaders while catastrophic evidence piles up around us, then the COP process is unfit for purpose, and needs to be changed.
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