Recent years continue to indicate the fast-unfolding nature of the climate change crisis– unprecedented heatwaves in South Asia and Europe this year, to a ‘monsoon on steroids’ and catastrophic floods in Pakistan. This makes the COP27– the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change– meetings in Egypt– which would have started today– an exceedingly important event given the huge importance of the climate change crisis, and the urgent need to both come up with detailed and meaningfully ambitious plans by countries in terms of their efforts towards reaching net-zero carbon target, and for developed countries to come true on their climate related commitments towards providing climate finance to developing countries.
As things stand, sadly the efforts to deal with the climate change crisis by countries– especially the developed countries, with their relatively much higher carbon footprint– and multilateral institutions are far below where they should be. Reaching this milestone at the earliest possible is indeed important to limit average global temperature below the 1.5°C mark to avoid the irreversible consequences of the climate change crisis, and as soon as possible, since even at 1.2°C currently, the world is seeing more frequent and deeper disaster events than only a few years ago.
So, basically the window of climate action is closing quite rapidly, it strongly appears. A recent The Guardian published article ‘Goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C “more fragile” than ever, says Cop27 chair’ highlighted the comments of COP27 chair– Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry– as follows: ‘“It is more fragile, because of the impact of the current global situation,” he told The Guardian in an interview. He said the agreement won at Cop26 in Glasgow last year had been overshadowed by events since. “[The circumstances for Cop27 are] quite challenging. They exceed the circumstances that existed in Paris or in Glasgow in terms of the challenge and impacts, economic or geopolitical. But we have to remain hopeful and focused and try to isolate and insulate the negotiating process from some of the external circumstances.” He warned that rich countries were losing the trust of the developing world, because they were falling behind on their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and provide climate finance to poor nations.’
If only the climate-related events are any indicator, the fast-unfolding climate change crisis in terms of its consequences in 2022 up till now– from heatwaves to heavy rainfall, to floods to hurricanes– and the much quicker and more intense pace that a number of these events have happened over the last few years alone, it should indeed be clear that the efforts on reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be increased a lot more rapidly.
In addition to greenhouse gas emissions commitments by developed countries, both these countries and multilateral institutions need to make a lot more effort in terms of providing appropriate levels of climate finance to developing countries. To start with, developed countries overall should come true on their promise providing $100 billion climate finance annually to developing countries.
In this regard, a recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published report ‘Emissions gap report 2022’ highlighted the need to pick up efforts to meet goals set in 2015 Paris Agreement (COP21), as follows: ‘This thirteenth edition of the Emissions Gap Report is testimony to inadequate action on the global climate crisis, and is a call for the rapid transformation of societies. Since the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26), there has been very limited progress in reducing the immense emissions gap for 2030, the gap between the emissions reductions promised and the emissions reductions needed to achieve the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement…’
The Report pointed out that the G20 group of countries were falling well short, especially given the high level of carbon footprint of these rich, advanced countries. In this regard, the Report indicated ‘Most of the G20 members that have submitted stronger NDC [nationally determined contributions] targets since 2020 have just started the implementation of policies and actions to meet their new targets. Those that are currently projected to meet their NDC targets are countries that have either not updated their original NDCs, or did not strengthen or only moderately strengthened their target levels in their updated NDCs. All other G20 members will need additional policies to achieve their NDCs. …Collectively, the G20 members are not on track to achieve their new or updated NDCs. Based on current policies scenario projections in independent studies, there is an implementation gap, defined as the difference between projected emissions under current policies and projected emissions under full implementation of the NDCs.’
In addition to greenhouse gas emissions commitments by developed countries, both these countries and multilateral institutions need to make a lot more effort in terms of providing appropriate levels of climate finance to developing countries. To start with, developed countries overall should come true on their promise providing $100 billion climate finance annually to developing countries.
In addition, while the World Bank should make much more effort in providing a lot more climate conscious financing, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should provide an urgently needed enhanced special drawing rights (SDRs) allocation at $650 billion globally (and with a distribution formula of this allocation, based on just ‘quota’), along with cancelling their policy of putting a ‘surcharge’ on programme countries that are late on their repayments. Moreover, there have also been suggestions to the IMF to provide an appropriate level of SDR allocations annually to countries that are at high climate vulnerable levels.
