Time for Resolutions
This year, it will be 3 decades of failing attempts to tackle global warming. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted at the Earth Summit, in Brazil, in 1992. Thirty years later, the return of a Brazilian dignitary improves the chances in a battle that is close to being lost or at least deeply hindered. Right after winning the elections, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva committed to halting deforestation in the Amazon and recouping Brazil′s leadership in climate action.
Adopted by 197 parties, the ultimate objective of the UN Climate Convention is “to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.” The Conference of the Parties, or COP as most people know it, was set to advance the objective of the Convention. However, such a task has been anything but simple. The objective was ambiguous from the start, maybe due to a lack of knowledge or perhaps due to a lack of will.
What does it take to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system?
In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol tried to answer with emission targets of 38 industrialized nations adding a 5% reduction by 2012. Years later, it would be evident that Kyoto was insufficient at best. Over 190 countries met in Bali in 2007 to begin the negotiations of a post-Kyoto agreement. The goal was to engage both developed and developing countries with more ambitious targets by 2020. But the quest ended at COP 15 in Copenhagen with a disastrous deal never to be sealed.
It took 23 years and 21 COPs to clarify the goal of the UN Climate Convention. In 2015, the Paris Agreement enlightened us all with its article 2 (a). To negotiators who met in Paris, preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system meant to “Hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” But that was not the end of the story.
How do we hold the increase of temperature in the 2°C- 1.5C range?
Three years later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would conclude that to reach the 2°C-1.5°C range, emissions should be halved by 2030 and brought down to?NetZero?by 2050. The truth is that greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing consistently and significantly regardless of the Paris Agreement. Countries make all sorts of pledges, but they won’t reduce their emissions with the intensity and speed required to meet their own targets, let alone the common goals of 50% by 2030 and NetZero by 2050. According to the United Nations Environment Program′s estimations, the sum of emission reduction targets in National Determined Contributions, submitted so far, project a 2.5°C temperature increase pathway. To some experts, the 1.5°C temperature goal is not feasible anymore due to economic and energy policy pragmatism.
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But in the world of climate since every fraction of degree counts, every fraction is important. Even a 2°C temperature increase scenario implies 420 additional million people facing extreme heat and over 50 million displaced due to floods. We don′t even need to think in terms of future scenarios. With only a 1.2°C increase since the industrial revolution, heavy rains flooded 1/3 of Pakistan this year, claiming over 1,500 human lives and devastating 1 million homes. Europe had the worst drought in 500 years and the entire island of Cuba was blacked out after being hit by Huracan Ian. For the first time in its history, extreme droughts in Monterrey, Mexico, left people without water for several weeks. According to the National Autonomous University (UNAM), temperature increase scenarios of over 3°C could cost Mexico 5 times the value of its GDP. ???
Yesterday, COP 27 was kicked off in Egypt in a context of complexity and turbulence. With double-digit inflation rates and the menace of recession, the attention of world leaders is facing elsewhere.?Moreover, tensions between the United States and China over Taiwan limit the possibility of an understanding between the superpowers that defined the Paris Climate Agreement.
But even in that context, there are some positive signals. Fossil fuel price increases due to the Russia-Ukraine war are speeding up the energy transition in Europe and other countries, and now the International Energy Agency predicts for the first time that greenhouse gas emissions will peak in 2025. For the next three years, the United States government will invest an unprecedented $369 billion dollar in clean energy through subsidies and tax rebates mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act. But the US also requires emerging economies to strengthen their emission reduction targets and that is why John Kerry has visited Mexico and other countries so many times. Lula′s Victory is good news not only for the emissions he will avoid by halting deforestation but due to Brazil′s potential incidence with China and India representing 37% of the world′s global emissions.
Expectations for COP 27 are uncertain. Vulnerable countries will demand rich countries for compensation over “lost and damages” from climate change. Some emerging economies will announce stronger emission reduction pledges, but very likely still insufficient. In the face of higher temperature and impact scenarios, financial and climate adaptation arrangements will be essential to keep the ball rolling.??Mexico will update its emission reduction targets. Hopefully, they will be quantitative, ambitious, transparent and, most of all, achievable.??
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