UN climate negotiations in Madrid were set to conclude yesterday with even the best-case outcome likely to fall well short of what is said to be needed to avert global warming.
As pressure inside and outside the talks mounted, old splits dividing rich and developing nations over who should slash greenhouse gas emissions by how much, and how to pay the bills that climate legislation would require have re-emerged.
Newer fissures between poor nations and emerging giants such as China and India —the world’s No. 1 and No. 4 emitters — might further stymie progress.
Photo: Reuters
To not lose time, the 12-day meeting was moved at the last minute from original host Chile due to social unrest.
However, observers and delegates said that negotiators had largely failed to live up to the conference’s motto: Time for Action.
Not even appearances from environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg could spur countries to boost carbon-cutting pledges that are, taken together, woefully inadequate.
“We are appalled at the state of negotiations,” said Carlos Fuller, lead negotiator for the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS).
“At this stage we are being cornered. We fear having to concede on too many issues that would damage the very integrity of the Paris Agreement,” Fuller said.
The narrow aim of the Madrid negotiations is to finalize the rulebook for the 2015 climate accord, which enjoins nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” 2°C.
“Raising ambition” on emissions remains the overarching goal in Madrid.
Host nation Spain on Thursday said that rich and developing nations alike were stalling.
“There are two very clear visions,” Spanish Minister for Energy and Climate Change Teresa Ribera told reporters.
“There are those that want to move quicker and those that want to hide behind things which aren’t working, so as not to advance,” Ribera said.
The deadline under the Paris Agreement for revisiting carbon-cutting commitments — known as nationally determined contributions (NDC) — is next year, ahead of the next climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
However, Madrid was seen as a crucial launch pad where countries could show their good intentions. Nearly 80 countries have said they intend to do more, but they only represent 10 percent of global emissions.
ABSENTEES
Conspicuously absent are China, India and Brazil, all of whom have indicated they will not follow suit, insisting that first-world emitters step up.
“If my NDCs are already compliant with the requirements of the Paris Agreement, why should I revise it again?” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s lead negotiator.
However, some countries historically aligned with the emerging giants over the course of the 25-year talks broke ranks on Thursday.
“The failure of major emitters — including Australia, the United States, Canada, Russia, India, China, Brazil — to commit to submitting revised NDCs suitable for achieving a 1.5°C world shows a lack of ambition that also undermines ours,” AOSIS said in a statement.
The talks could receive a shot in the arm if the EU formalizes a plan to render the bloc carbon neutral by mid-century.
The UN said this month that for the world to limit warming to 1.5°C, emissions would need to drop by more than 7 percent annually through 2030, requiring nothing less than a restructuring of the global economy.
They are currently rising year-on-year and have grown 4 percent since the Paris Agreement was signed.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees