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Paris (AFP)
Five years ago, countries agreed on a plan to chart humanity’s path away from climate catastrophe, with the historic Paris agreement paving the way to a greener and healthier future.
However, carbon pollution has continued to rise as temperature logs drop with increasing regularity.
After a year of devastating wildfires and record mega-storms, heads of state will try this week to breathe new life into the Paris Agreement.
On December 12, 2015, after 13 days of grueling negotiations between 195 country delegations, the sledgehammer fell on the COP 21 conference with a momentous message.
Almost every nation on Earth has pledged to limit warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels.
A more ambitious limit of 1.5 ° C was also adopted.
But things have not gone according to plan.
Its viability, challenged by Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the United States and the collective breach of his promises, the goals of the Paris agreement are currently destined not to be met.
The last five years have been marked by growing alarm from scientists highlighting the need for urgency, and by popular anger manifested in youth strikes over the climate of millions of people.
However, despite the hard data and the hardening of public opinion, “climate policies have yet to rise to the challenge,” according to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
“Today, we are in 1.2 degrees of warming and we are already witnessing unprecedented volatility and climatic extremes in all regions and on all continents,” he said last week.
Such warming is already contributing to the wave of wildfires that hit California and Australia this year, as well as the record number of hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic.
– Small progress –
Despite its shortcomings, the Paris agreement is probably already limiting the damage from climate change that would otherwise go unchecked.
“Before the Paris agreement, we were heading for a warming of between 4 ° C and 6 ° C by the end of the century,” said Christiana Figueres, who was a UN climate envoy during COP 21.
He said the first series of pledges from countries, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), put Earth on course to be 3.7 ° C warmer by 2100.
“Obviously 3.7 is too much, too much and unacceptable,” he said at an online press conference last week.
But this year has seen a host of major economies commit to achieving net zero emissions at some point in the future.
Climate Action Tracker calculated last week that with Japan, South Korea and the EU targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 and China by 2060, along with Joe Biden in the White House, warming could be limited this century to 2.1 ° C.
So far, more than 100 countries that account for the majority of carbon emissions have submitted plans for net zero.
“It’s positive, the question is: will it happen?” said COP 21 President Laurent Fabius.
2020 is likely to end up helping things, and the economic slowdown linked to the pandemic will likely result in a roughly 7 percent drop in emissions compared to last year.
But the UN has sounded the alarm about spending by countries in sectors that rely on fossil fuels to boost their recoveries from Covid-19.
Under the Paris “ratchet” mechanism, nations must increase their emission reduction plans every five years.
With days remaining before the December 31 deadline, fewer than 20 countries accounting for 5 percent of emissions have so far submitted revised NDCs.
Organizers of this weekend’s virtual climate summit, held online instead of COP26, which was delayed until November 2021 due to the pandemic, hope it can generate renewed momentum to reduce pollution more strictly.
– ‘Doomed to extinction’ –
Mohamed Nasheed, former president of the Maldives and ambassador of the Climate Vulnerable Forum representing 48 countries most at risk from climate change, said the summit should result in “much greater ambition in terms of each country’s plans to reduce emissions. “.
“Our nations, particularly the small island states, will be doomed to extinction even with a score of two degrees,” he told AFP.
“Anything below 1.5 ° C condemns us to death.”
High-risk nations have continually asked wealthy counterparts to deliver on a promise to provide $ 100 billion annually to help them adapt to climate change.
But even with renewed ambition, and if adaptation funding ever materializes, is it possible to limit warming to 1.5 ° C?
“If all countries reach carbon neutrality by 2050, it is physically possible,” said climatologist Corinne Le Quere.
“But is it politically and economically possible?”
The UN estimates that to keep 1.5 ° C in play, emissions must fall 7.6 percent annually this decade.
That may well happen this year, but Le Quere told AFP that “a rebound is inevitable.”
To keep up the pressure, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has called for a new day of protests on Friday, December 11, the day before the online summit, jointly organized by Britain, France and the UN.
In the five years since Paris, “very little has happened,” he said on Twitter. “We demand action.”
UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa, in a speech last month, summed up the state of climate action.
“What we don’t know is the date when it becomes too late, when we finally cross the point of no return,” he told attendees at an online conference.
“What we do know is that right now, today, we still have time.”
© 2020 AFP
