For the first time since 2019 and following a flurry of net-zero pledges from the world’s largest emitters, UN climate negotiations yesterday resumed in a virtual format just six months before the crunch Climate Change Conference (COP26) summit.
The talks, nominally hosted by the UN climate change program in the German city of Bonn, will all be informal, meaning that no decisions will be taken during the three-week dialogue.
However, with increasingly dire warnings from scientists that the pace of global warming is already outstripping humanity’s best plan to cut emissions, the pressure for progress to be made on a number of thorny issues is high.
Photo: AFP
In 2018, countries agreed to many elements of the Paris agreement “rulebook,” governing how each nation implements its goals.
However, several issues remain unresolved, including rules about transparency, carbon markets and a unified timeframe for all countries to ratchet up their emissions cuts.
At the last UN climate summit in December 2019, countries also failed to agree upon a universal system of reporting climate finance.
A deal on greater transparency was “a central component of the effective implementation of the Paris agreement,” World Resources Institute research associate Nathan Cogswell said.
“The upcoming session will hopefully help parties get closer to that,” he added.
One of the thorniest debates during recent UN climate talks has been Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which deals with the trade of emissions cuts.
A major sticking point remains over rules to avoid double counting emissions reductions within both bilateral and international carbon markets.
Some wealthy nations without the natural resources — forests, for instance — to mitigate their contribution to climate change have spent huge amounts on projects to preserve those habitats in other countries. Currently, both the buying and selling nations may count the project toward their domestic climate action, opening the door for the same cut to be counted twice.
Cogswell said that a failure to agree on a protection against double counting emissions reductions by the end of the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in November would “weaken the ambition of global efforts” to fight climate change.
COVID-19 forced Britain and the UN to shelve talks originally scheduled for last year until the end of this year.
As the pandemic continues to rage, particularly among developing nations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, negotiators will need to achieve tangible progress during the three-week Bonn talks.
“The absence of a COP left a tremendous amount of work to be done ... if we want to deliver at Glasgow,” said Marianne Karlsen, chair of a major technical forum at the UN-led negotiations.
The two-week sessions — expanded this year to three — normally involve thousands of representatives from more than 180 countries, and often rely on behind-closed-doors bargaining between delegates to get deals done.
Karlsen said the virtual configuration of talks was “not ideal at all.”
“We really wanted to be able to have all the interactions of when we meet in person, but there was no other option,” she said.
Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, chair of the UN’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice technical working group, said delegates needed to use the virtual negotiations to “prioritize a way to capture progress, so we can capture that progress when we meet in person, and make decisions” in Glasgow.
“It’s important that we send a clear message to the world: We are very much engaged in resolving the Paris rulebook and to tackling this climate change conundrum,” he said.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday. “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up,” Motegi said. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider.” Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Tokyo to use its Self-Defense Forces overseas if an attack,
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
RSS