Today at Cop26 in Glasgow is Boris Johnson’s day again. The British Prime Minister returns to speak to the world, ten days after the opening ceremony, to urge them to do more: the cautious optimism that accompanied the start of the works, on the driving force of the G20 in Rome, is already a distant memory. “The negotiators are at the last few meters, the hardest, to try to transform promises into action on climate change … but there is still a lot to do”, admitted the premier: there is more at stake than destiny ” of any single country, it is necessary to unite for the planet ». “We need to eliminate all obstacles if we want to keep the goal of reaching 1.5 degrees,” his latest spur. But beyond the usual words, the premier’s concern is linked to the fact that the work is not proceeding as expected, and confirmation comes from the draft of the final COP26 document released by the British presidency.
The document, the British media reports, urges countries to “revisit and strengthen” by the end of 2022 the emission reduction targets for 2030 in their national action plans with the aim of limiting global warming to 1 , 5 degrees. Target substantially already abundantly clarified at the Paris Conference. The only concrete novelty, the passage in which it is quoted: “Doing so requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to the 2010 level and net zero around the mid-century “.
Cop26, if the warming exceeds 2 degrees, the poor in the world and the risk of disasters would double
The draft, which will be the basis for negotiation between the countries participating in the talks, urges the countries to “accelerate the gradual elimination of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels”, the real crux of the matter, strongly opposed by the “major polluters” of the planet, namely China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. But, this is the problem, the document is limited to vague references and sentences of principle, not going into the concrete and setting deadlines or terms.
Another important point on paper, but not sufficiently detailed, is the invitation to developed countries to at least double their climate finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change. The document aims “to reach the target of 100 billion dollars a year by 2023 at the latest”. Which, he notes with regret, “has not yet been achieved.”
The draft, ultimately, for now does not respect the commitments made: the last days of the conference could see new efforts and improvements, but the feeling is that it may remain a bearish agreement. Not surprisingly, this morning Greta Thunberg and other activists returned to the attack, with a legal petition addressed to the UN to ask the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, to formally declare the problem of global warming as a “systemic climate emergency”.