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  Nov 6, 2022

• Source: El País…

• Translations: Germán & Co

Manuel Planelles

MANUEL PLANELLES

Madrid - 06 NOV 2022 - 05:30Updated:06 NOV 2022 - 10:10 CET

On 28 February, just four days after the invasion of Ukraine, it was impossible to focus on anything other than the columns of Russian tanks advancing through the heart of Europe. But on 28 February, the IPCC, the international panel of experts that has provided the scientific basis for global warming for three decades, released a major report in which it concluded that "human-induced" climate change has already caused "widespread adverse impacts" on humans and nature. The document - which UN Secretary-General António Guterres called "an atlas of human suffering" - reviewed the negative effects "in all sectors and regions" of the planet. But he warned: not everyone is being hit equally by this crisis, with the worst being borne by highly vulnerable regions such as Africa, South Asia, Central and South America and the poorest small island states. Just one fact helps to understand this: "Between 2010 and 2020, human mortality from floods, droughts and storms was 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions compared to regions with very low vulnerability".

Eight months after that report and the beginning of an invasion that has no end in sight, the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh is hosting the annual UN climate summit, COP27, starting this Sunday. It brings together the most vulnerable countries that have been battered by increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events due to climate change for which they are the least responsible and which threatens to curb their development possibilities. Over the next two weeks of negotiations, delegates from these nations of the so-called global south will try to get the richest countries - those historically responsible for warming - to commit in the most robust way to compensation formulas. They are asking for a specific fund or mechanism to be set up for what is known in climate diplomacy as "loss and damage". In other words, the irreversible impacts that are already occurring with the current level of warming, which averages 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.

This debate is of particular importance in a planet that will continue to warm and where extreme events will increase considerably, as science warns. But this debate has never been fully addressed in the three decades of climate negotiations since the first COP was held in Berlin in 1995. "Loss and damage has been the subject always postponed. There is no more time to postpone it," Guterres demanded this week. "Getting concrete results on loss and damage is the litmus test of governments' commitment," he added.

"It will be a central theme of the summit," admitted Wael Aboulmagd, the special ambassador appointed by the Egyptian presidency of COP27, on Friday. The negotiations of delegates from the nearly 200 countries participating in the summit begin on Sunday, but the informal opening will take place on Monday and Tuesday, when around 125 heads of state and government will take the floor, according to the COP presidency's estimates. Europe's top leaders will be there, and although US President Joe Biden will not be attending the opening, he will be attending the summit later next week on his way to the G20 meeting in Indonesia.

Not expected in Egypt are the leaders of China, India and Russia. The tension generated by the war in Ukraine and increasing friction between the United States and China, which now account for around 40 per cent of global emissions, are hampering progress on the big issues on the multilateral agenda. And the fight against climate change is no exception. At last year's summit in Glasgow, the US and China sealed a pact to make progress on some concrete measures, such as reducing methane emissions. But following tensions over the conflict in Taiwan, talks between the two countries were put on hold in August. Wael Aboulmagd denies, however, that this tension will spill over to the Egyptian summit. And John Kerry, the US special envoy for climate change, last week left the door open for a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Sharm el-Sheikh.

At this summit, considered a transitional summit after last year's in Glasgow, the poorest countries arrive with a small initial goal: there is a broad consensus that the issue of loss and damage should be formally discussed among delegates, including, for example, the certain risk of some island states disappearing, the impacts caused by droughts and floods, and even climate migration. Among developed countries, reluctance has focused in recent years on opening the floodgates to claims whose outcome is uncertain.

Failures

Having to discuss loss and damage is, to a certain extent, the confirmation of humanity's failure to face the challenge of climate change, which has been on the table for more than three decades without a halt to the constant increase in greenhouse gas emissions, whose origin lies mainly in the fossil fuels that feed the global economy. These negotiations have two legs: mitigation (reducing gases to bring warming within safe limits) and adaptation (preparing societies for the already unavoidable effects of climate change). The rich nations' commitment was to help those with fewer resources in both areas by "mobilising" $100 billion a year from 2020. But 2020 came and that target was not met. According to calculations by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only 83.3 billion dollars were reached by 2020.

The term mobilise includes public and private resources that reach developing countries through loans and non-repayable aid. But the result is that most of the money comes in the form of loans (only 21% in 2020 were grants). Moreover, only 34% of the funds (29 billion) were allocated to adaptation actions for the poorest nations to protect themselves against the ravages of global warming. To these OECD figures, the International Red Cross adds another: none of the world's 30 most vulnerable countries are among the top 30 recipients of adaptation funds per capita.

This failure of developed countries to deliver has sown mistrust in the climate negotiations in recent years. This is why Guterres calls for rebuilding "trust" between "North and South". He proposes something like "a historic pact between developed and emerging economies" for rich nations to help emerging countries to adapt and also to reduce emissions.

An elusive goal

Because the other point on which humanity is also off track is the reduction of greenhouse gases. The Paris Agreement, which came out of the COP held in 2015 in the French capital, established a safety limit: the average global temperature at the end of the century must not exceed 2 degrees Celsius and, as far as possible, 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But with warming of 1.1 degrees Celsius and countries' climate plans inadequate, the possibility of meeting the 1.5 target is already becoming remote.

If we are to have any chance of achieving that goal, the science says global emissions must be reduced by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030. But the climate plans of the nearly 200 countries in the Paris Agreement will lead to a 10.6% increase in emissions by the end of this decade.

Last year's Glasgow summit ended with a call for countries to tighten their climate plans for this decade. And in the last 12 months 24 nations have done so, including China and India. The US and the European Union, for example, had updated their targets before Glasgow. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has analysed the set of plans to cut emissions and concludes that, if these pledges are met, the temperature rise would be between 2.4 and 2.6 degrees Celsius.

"It is still theoretically possible, but we are running out of time. If global emissions continue at current levels, the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees will disappear by the end of this decade," explains Anne Olhoff, one of the coordinators of the UNEP report. "That's why there can be no further delay in action and ambition. We already know that every fraction of a degree matters, which means that every tonne of emissions avoided matters," she adds.

THE COUNTRY

It matters, once again, when returning to the debate on loss and damage, because with every tenth of an increase, the negative impacts grow and do not hit everyone equally. The so-called V20 - a group of 58 developing nations considered highly vulnerable to climate change - this week released a report on the effects warming is already having on their territories. "The asymmetric impact deepens global inequalities and injustices. The poorest and most vulnerable nations are by far the hardest hit," the report concludes. And they are the least responsible. For example, these 58 V20 nations (which include Central African, Central American and at-risk Pacific nations) are home to some 1.5 billion people, about 20 per cent of the world's population, but emit only 5 per cent of global emissions. The same is true of the 54 African countries, which account for only 3-4% of global emissions. All of them "have contributed marginally" to global warming, the V20 concludes.