Does COP26 achievements reduce global warming?

 

WITHANAGE

This article is based on the FOEI analysis of the COP26 achievements  [Originally posted on January 20,2022]

Climate COP 26 just ended in Glasgow without much participation of the southern communities but with the heavy presence of the fossil lobbyists. According to the media more than 500 attendees from the fossil fuel industry were at the climate summit in Glasgow.

Overall the Glasgow Climate Pact does not get the world on track for keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, neither delivering the emission cut ambitions from global north countries, nor the finance needed for global south countries to do the same, and allowing for huge loopholes.

The Glasgow Climate Pact ‘recognises’ that 1.5 will require actions including ‘net zero’ by ‘around mid-century’. This isn’t in line with a 1.5 pathway and allows rich countries and corporations to keep polluting for decades, based on the fantasy of balancing out their emissions with offsets, carbon markets and other dangerous distractions. The door has also been opened to Nature Based Solutions for mitigation with a paragraph mentioning them in all but name – the nexus of carbon offsets, nature based solutions and net zero essentially creates a massive escape hatch for developed countries.  

After stalemate on international carbon markets rules for 5 years, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement has been agreed. Article 6 will make the Paris Agreement  operational and “will give certainty and predictability to both market and non-market approaches in support of mitigations as well as adaptation. According to the FOEI, the agreement on carbon markets will likely undermine any chances of staying below the 1.5 degree temperature limit as they are unlikely to reduce emissions and will instead likely act as a smokescreen for continuing or even increasing emissions from burning fossil fuels since the adapted decisions openly allow the use of carbon sinks (plantations, lands and other ecosystem-based sinks in another country) to offset emissions. Carbon markets allows rich countries and corporations off the hook, and it will interplay with weak net zero plans and the now open door to Nature Based Solutions, it will result in land grabbing and human rights abuses in the global South and likely condemns us to exceeding the 1.5-degree threshold.  

Although the Glasgow pact has been celebrated as the first time an explicit mention of phasing out fossil fuels has appeared in UNFCCC text, it allows continued fossil fuel use, only calling for phasing down of “unabated coal power,” leaving open the possibility of coal usage with carbon capture & storage. It also allows for continued fossil fuel subsidies, only calling for phasing down of “inefficient” subsidies.

By focusing only on coal and not including oil and gas, this text disproportionately impacts certain developing countries like China and India. India said in negotiations that all fossil fuels must be phased down, in an equitable manner. This is quite a reasonable response that is supported by a broad coalition of civil society groups.   A globally equitable fossil fuel phase-out is essential for the just, feminist and green transitions that countries need to make.

Leaders made a number of headline-catching announcements but while many of these sounded superficially good, they were often light on detail, with distant targets and little in the way of accountability. They have been described at ‘empty calorie’ announcements. Clearly some are better than others and give scope for further pressure and action, especially the ending fossil fuel finance pledge and the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, but all require scrutiny. A further consideration is that these pledges and announcements often served as a distraction from what was happening within the negotiations themselves, and that some of the key countries announcing things were playing an actively unhelpful role within the talks on the very topics they were claiming credit for in the media.

Leaders representing over 85% of the world’s forests committed to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030 at COP26, but is was “No more than a rebranding of previous flawed attempts to greenwash increased carbon emissions”

Further, over 190 countries pledges to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally, rapidly scale up deployment of clean power generation, phase out coal power in economies in the 2030s for major economies and 2040s for the rest of the world and make a just transition away from coal power in a way that benefits workers and communities. Again, this is a recycled announcements.  

39 Countries joined the statements to end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement.  However FoEI state “COP26 end to fossil fuel financing – welcome but hypocritical as action is still missing at home”

45 governments pledge urgent action and investment to protect nature and shift to more sustainable ways of farming.  95 high profile companies from a range of sectors commit to being ‘Nature Positive’, agreeing to work towards halting and reversing the decline of nature by 2030. 

But FOEI says “These schemes are trying to open up vast areas of agriculture, forests and oceans to act as carbon offsets for polluting business as usual. That is completely unacceptable and not what we need to be seeing from COP26. Worse still, many of them are re-packaging false solutions like carbon markets, voluntary certification, and industrial farming as climate action. When these announcements are made, it is always with a view to making the money on offer look like a solution, but really it isn’t.

“Instead, this will unleash more land grabbing, displacement of indigenous peoples and local communities who are the real guardians of biodiversity and providers of climate solutions. The real solutions lie in ending fossil fuel extraction, getting binding regulations to stop deforestation and industrial farming, and instead fund real solutions like agroecology and community management of forests.”

In overall assessment COP 26 was not climate positive but corporate positive. It provided rich nations to pollute further with carbon markets. The civil society opined that we need real Zero at this juncture and no market solutions can abate serious climate catastrophes.