COP26 interim balance
The world climate summit is heading for 1.8 degrees warming – and initial promises are being weakened
The requirement for the World Climate Conference: “Act now!”
© Peter Summers / Getty Images
Promises, announcements, plans: after a week, the world climate summit is on course towards global warming of 1.8 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. Progress, they say, but there are already relativizations.
A week full of announcements at the world climate summit is over, another is to follow. The delegates will not have to present the results until next Friday or – as with most summits in the past – after overtime next Saturday. If you take the various promises made by the states so far in Glasgow together, this would amount to global warming of 1.8 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. At least that is what the International Energy Agency has calculated.
New analyzes by the agency showed that the pact to reduce the climate-damaging greenhouse gas methane and the new net zero targets would amount to this value, said the head of the agency, Fatih Birol, in Glasgow. “This is a big step forward, but much more is needed,” wrote Birol on Twitter.
Nothing to celebrate before not going to 1.5 degrees
The goal of COP26 is still to keep the 1.5 degree target set in the Paris Climate Agreement within the realm of what is possible. At the time, the states had undertaken to take stock in Glasgow and make adjustments. According to climate researchers, the less ambitious “well below two degrees” target is no longer sufficient to avert catastrophic damage, according to recent findings. Before the COP, the United Nations had sounded the alarm: According to the existing plans of the states led the world to a global temperature of 2.7 degrees. According to experts, it is difficult to estimate what effects such a heating up of the world would have.
Selwin Hart of the United Nations warned that it would still take “a very long way” to achieve the 1.5 degree target. “We cannot celebrate before we have gone the way. I urge everyone to keep fighting.” Greenpeace pointed out that the calculations were based on promises for which it was far from clear whether they would actually be kept. Countries like Saudi Arabia have not yet taken concrete measures for their goals, said the head of the Greenpeace delegation Juan Pablo Orsornio. “It’s like saying that someday I’ll run a marathon, but then I’ll never train and still tell people I’m a marathon runner.”
Stop deforestation: Indonesia is already putting it into perspective
Just two days after numerous states agreed on an agreement to stop deforestation by 2030, Indonesia put the scope of the agreement into perspective, as if to prove it. Describing the agreement as an agreement on a complete stop to deforestation is “wrong and misleading,” Indonesia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mahendra Siregar said on Thursday. The country’s environment minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, said it was “clearly inappropriate and unfair” to “force” Indonesia to stop deforestation completely by 2030.
The declaration for better protection of forests was signed on Tuesday. More than a hundred countries, including Indonesia, signed up to the declaration. There are different definitions for deforestation, said Environment Minister Bakar. Climate protection agreements are also unlikely to have a negative impact on economic growth. The “massive development” of Indonesia under President Joko Widodo must not be “stopped in the name of CO2 emissions or deforestation,” she stressed.
Coal phase-out: important countries are missing from new alliances
There are also considerable doubts about the effectiveness of the big promises to phase out coal-fired power generation. Although more than 40 countries want to exit in the 2030s or 2040s at the latest – 23 of these countries are committed to such a step for the first time – the truth also includes: Big emitters like China and the USA, but also India and Australia not there. The jubilation of summit president Alok Sharma (“The end of coal is in sight”) is therefore likely to be premature. Energy generation from coal is still the single largest factor in global warming.
Greenpeace criticized the coal promises: “The small print seems to give countries considerable leeway to choose their own exit date, despite the dazzling headline,” said delegation head Osornion of the BBC. So far, countries have not faced any sanctions if they fail to adhere to their declarations of intent. After all, Germany is on schedule with its plans for the alliance – both with the coalition coalition partners’ potential for 2030 and with the coalition phase that has been decided so far by 2038 at the latest.
“We have to decarbonise!”
In another coal alliance, however, Germany is not on board: 25 countries and several banks are committed to ending the financing of fossil fuels by the end of 2022 and instead investing in green energies. The USA has also signed this agreement. Why Germany did not join remained unclear. The Federal Environment Ministry only announced that the federal government was “still voting on joining the declaration”.
Aminath Shauna summed up the fact that efforts to achieve the 1.5 degree target are not just about numbers behind the decimal point: “The difference between 1.5 and two degrees is a death sentence for countries like the Maldives “said the archipelago’s environment minister. He made an urgent appeal: “We have to decarbonize.”