Climate talks end with deal after late coal compromise
Print Edition
THE UN climate talks ended on Saturday with a deal that for the first time targeted fossil fuels as the key driver of global warming, even as coal-reliant countries lobbed last-minute objections.
While the agreement won applause for keeping alive the hope of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, many of the nearly 200 national delegations wished they’d come away with more.
The two-week conference in Scotland delivered a major win in resolving the rules around carbon markets, but it did little to assuage vulnerable countries’ concerns about long-promised climate financing from rich nations.
The British COP26 president, Alok Sharma, was visibly emotional before banging down his gavel to signal there were no vetoes to the pact, after the talks had extended overtime — and overnight — into Saturday.
In the final days of the conference, China and the United States issued a joint declaration on enhancing climate change actions in the 2020s, which is widely welcomed and believed can galvanize global collective actions.
The two countries agreed to establish a working group on enhancing climate action this decade to promote cooperation on climate change between the two countries as well as multilateral processes.
“The Glasgow Climate Pact will help kick-start a new journey of global efforts to tackle climate change,” Zhao Yingmin, head of the Chinese delegation to COP26, said.
“The new global deal, especially the close of the rulebook of the Paris Agreement, bears great significance for defending multilateralism and the implementation of the Paris Agreement,” said Zhao, who is China’s vice minister of ecology and environment.
There was last-minute drama as India rejected a clause calling for the “phase out” of coal-fired power. After a huddle between the envoys from China, India, the United States and European Union, the clause was hurriedly amended to ask countries to “phase down” their coal use.
India’s environment and climate minister, Bhupender Yadav, said the revision reflected the “national circumstances of emerging economies.”
“We are becoming the voice of the developing countries,” he told Reuters, saying the pact had “singled out” coal but kept quiet about oil and natural gas.
“We made our effort to make a consensus that is reasonable for developing countries and reasonable for climate justice,” he said, alluding to the fact that rich nations historically have emitted the largest share of greenhouse gases.
“The approved texts are a compromise,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today.”
The overarching aim he had set for the conference was one that climate campaigners and vulnerable countries said was too modest — to “keep alive” the 2015 Paris Agreement’s target to keep global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5C (above pre-industrial levels. Scientists say warming beyond this point could unleash irreversible and uncontrollable climate impacts).
In asking nations to set tougher targets by next year for cutting climate-warming emissions, the agreement effectively acknowledged that commitments were still inadequate. National pledges currently have the world on track for about 2.4C of warming.
The talks also led to a breakthrough in resolving rules for covering government-led markets for carbon offsets. Companies and countries with vast forest cover had pushed hard for a deal, in hopes also of legitimizing the fast-growing global voluntary offset markets.
The deal allows countries to partially meet their climate targets by buying offset credits representing emission cuts by others, potentially unlocking trillions of dollars for protecting forests, expanding renewable energy and other projects to combat climate change.
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of the campaign group Greenpeace, saw the glass as half-full.
“They changed a word but they can’t change the signal coming out of this COP, that the era of coal is ending,” she said. “If you’re a coal company executive, this COP saw a bad outcome.”
The deal offered a promise to double adaptation finance by 2025 from 2019, but again no guarantees.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 娌狪CP璇侊細娌狪CP澶05050403鍙-1
- |
- 浜掕仈缃戞柊闂讳俊鎭湇鍔¤鍙瘉锛31120180004
- |
- 缃戠粶瑙嗗惉璁稿彲璇侊細0909346
- |
- 骞挎挱鐢佃鑺傜洰鍒朵綔璁稿彲璇侊細娌瓧绗354鍙
- |
- 澧炲肩數淇′笟鍔＄粡钀ヨ鍙瘉锛氭勃B2-20120012
Copyright 漏 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
