The objective of + 1.5 ° C about to be buried in Sharm el-Sheikh?

As a bonus, the Glasgow Pact made this high target the main trajectory to aim for. Not only did the 200 or so countries represented agree to “continue efforts” to stay below this threshold. But they also recognized that the effects of climate change will be much less if the temperature increases by 1.5°C rather than 2°C, thus enacting the key message of the special report 1.5 of the

As a bonus, the Glasgow Pact made this high target the main trajectory to aim for. Not only did the 200 or so countries represented agree to “continue efforts” to stay below this threshold. But they also recognized that the effects of climate change will be much less if the temperature increases by 1.5°C rather than 2°C, enacting the key message of the Special Report 1.5 of the Panel of Experts on Climate Change ( IPCC) published in October 2018.

One step forward, two steps back?

COP27, which is currently taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, will it go in the opposite direction? Answer in the “COP decision”. Negotiated to the comma, this text summarizes all the points negotiated during the fortnight and on which the countries commit. He is expected Friday at the earliest. But countries have already expressed their reluctance to see a reference to the + 1.5°C target included.

This is particularly the case of China and Saudi Arabia, quotes AFP. Lola Vallejo, director of the climate program at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), refers more generally to the Arab group and the LMDC group. The first includes 21 countries – Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar…- whose economy depends largely on fossil fuels, in particular oil. The second, which literally means “Developing countries that think the same”, is a spontaneous coalition of 24 emerging States which consider that an overly restrictive objective is an obstacle to their development. It includes China, then, and India.

This is not the first time that countries have opposed any reference to the 1.5 target in a COP decision. “There are not more of them this year”, even slips Aurore Mathieu, international policy manager to the Climate Action Network (RAC). But this point of tension has a particular resonance this year. “We will be very vigilant on the question of 1.5”, assured the French delegation on Monday.

Already an ambition at half mast on mitigation…

The absence of reference to 1.5 would be “an obvious step backwards” compared to the Glasgow Pact, agrees Aurore Mathieu. A pact already well chipped in a year. Beyond reaffirming this high target, the world’s leaders had also committed to arriving at Sharm el-Sheikh with Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – what they plan to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions greenhouse -, revised upwards. The goal was precisely to approach the 1.5°C trajectory, when current commitments lead us much closer to a world at + 2.4°C by 2100. “In the end, less than thirty countries have done, including Mexico last week, resumes Aurore Mathieu. Turkey could follow this week, but we are far from the mark. »

Sébastien Treyer, CEO of IDDRI, remains optimistic about the mention of 1.5 in the final text of this COP27. “Western countries, as well as the most vulnerable [les petits états insulaires notamment, très écoutés à la COP], hold on to it fiercely, he begins. Moreover, that some oppose this reference does not mean that they want to drop this objective. China’s position, for example, is to say that the 1.5°C target is already included in the Paris agreement, was very supported last year, and that this COP27 does not need to repeat it . “Not enough, a priori, to make it an insurmountable blocking point…

“Science must be honest”

But how long can these 1.5°C last? “The more States disregard their commitments, the more climate change will accelerate and the more this target will become the object of tension”, apprehends Clément Sénéchal, the climate campaign manager of Greenpeace France. In fact, it already is. October 27, the climate action group Scientist Rebellion has published a letter, signed by 1,000 researchers from 47 countries, calling for burying the 1.5 target. Not to say that we can afford to be less ambitious, but to remind us that “there is no longer any credible trajectory” to achieve this objective. “Science must be honest, specifies the ecologist and contributor to the Giec Wolfgang Cramer, signer of the letter. If it remains physically possible to limit global warming, we have lost so much time since 2015, and the commitments on the table today are such that this prospect is now almost out of reach. »

“The problem is to have set this objective one day, considers political scientist François Gemenne, specialist in climatic migrations and also author of the IPCC. It was the small island states that pushed for it, from COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, when we already knew it was unattainable. The greenhouse gas concentration threshold corresponding to 1.5°C is 350 parts per million (ppm). It was crossed in the mid-1980s, and we will almost certainly reach 1.5°C of warming in the 2030s.

The risk of opening a Pandora’s box?

So back to the 2°C target? “This milestone will also be very difficult to achieve and requires drastic reductions in our GHG emissions,” begins François Gemenne. However, the political scientist is well aware that such a shift could “give the impression of giving up” and “give countries the opportunity to reduce their ambitions or gain time”. This is the risk identified by Sébastien Treyer and Clément Sénéchal. The latter fears in particular the opening of a Pandora’s box: “we would give ourselves the possibility of moving back the political objectives fixed each time that we note that the slope becomes too steep”. “This is what Emmanuel Macron has already done, during his first five-year term, with the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC)*”, he tackles.

Be that as it may, now is not the time to give up, insists Sébastien Treyer, not very comfortable with the letter from Scientist Rebellion or this post published on The Economist, which goes in the same direction. “The Giec is not saying that the 1.5 trajectory is now unattainable. There are still decarbonization scenarios that make it possible to stay below. Certainly at the cost of drastic transformations and with the probability of success decreasing the more we fall behind, but it is still possible. »

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