By El-Shaimaa Arafat
The 26th United Nations Climate Conference (COP26), held in Glasgow, Scotland, brought the issue of global warming back to global attention.
The gathering reviewed the progress made in achieving goals since the signing of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015.
The agreement calls for limiting the rise in the Earth’s temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The global momentum on this issue is expected to continue in COP27, to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh in November this year.
Rising costs
Economists expect damage caused by climate change to rise to $400 billion annually by 2030.
Half of the world’s population may face water scarcity by 2025, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
About 700 million people can be displaced due to severe water scarcity by 2030, it says.
An analysis by over 100 health experts that was published in the medical journal, The Lancet, drew strong links between climate change and human health.
Mixed results
After intense negotiations over two weeks, nearly 200 countries at the Glasgow summit reached commitments to reduce the effects of climate change.
There are, however, other issues on which there is no consensus. The most prominent pledges that emerged from the summit include the following:
– The United States and China, which account for almost 40% of global emissions, agreed to work together to limit the rise in global temperatures by 1.5°C.
– Over 100 countries pledged to reduce global methane emissions by about 30% until 2030, being the second largest greenhouse gas causing global warming after carbon dioxide.
– The 100 countries that contain 85% of the world’s forests, including China and Brazil, pledged to halt deforestation and compensate for what was cut down by 2030.
– Twenty states, including the US and Canada, pledged to stop funding fossil fuel-based projects abroad by late 2022.
– Thirty-four countries committed to suspending the sale of non-electric cars by at least 2040, including several leading markets that pledged to do so by 2035. Nonetheless, this agreement has not been signed yet by the governments of the World’s largest three auto markets, namely the US, Germany and China.
– Acknowledgment of guiding rules for establishing markets for global carbon exchange.
– Over 400 financial institutions that control around $130 trillion in global financial assets agreed to provide more money for green technology.
– Despite these commitments, there were conflicting views on the extent to which they would affect the implementation of the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement.
The International Energy Agency has indicated that these commitments will limit the rise in temperature at the end of the century by 1.8 degrees Celsius and will be broadly consistent with the Paris Agreement.
However, other agencies seemed less optimistic, including the Climate Action Tracker which has projected a rise in temperature by nearly 2.4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.
COP26 faced two major failures that may delay the implementation of international commitments to reach carbon neutrality.
Minutes before the end of the summit, the goal of gradually eliminating coal use was reduced to a mere promise of a “phasing down” of coal-fired electricity, with pressure from India and China.
The pledge to provide developing countries with $100 billion annually as of 2022 has not been honoured yet.
In conclusion, despite the progress made by the Glasgow summit in some climate change files, the historical experience of approving many commitments without realising them makes everybody pin hopes on COP27 to transform those pledges into clear mechanisms that can be implemented and followed up.
El-Shaimaa Arafat is a researcher at think tank Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies
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