Climate and Environment During War
The Climate and Environment During War: The 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change, known as Cop27, opened on November 6 in Sharm El Sheikh. The previous conference, held last fall in Glasgow, concluded with commitments to reduce methane emissions, protect forests, and gradually phase out fossil fuels. It has only been a year since that conference, but in this time, the international balance has undergone changes.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a series of events that have plunged the international community into crisis, jeopardizing the ability and willingness of countries to tackle climate change as a shared global priority. In the face of worsening coexistence among governments, what will happen to cooperation for environmental and climate preservation, and what can be expected from Cop27 in Egypt?
Where should we begin?
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published at the beginning of 2022, assesses the commitments made by countries during Cop26 to combat global warming as insufficient. According to the strategies approved by governments to reduce greenhouse gases, the IPCC estimates that the temperature increase from now until the end of the century will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius.
According to a new United Nations report, this temperature increase could even reach 2.5 degrees Celsius. Additionally, while it is expected that greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by about 45% by 2030, unfortunately, we are on a path to a 106% increase.
The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is considered a safety limit, meaning that below this level, the impacts of climate change can be controlled and managed. In contrast, even a half-degree Celsius increase will bring serious and uncontrollable risks in terms of heatwaves, floods, droughts, ecosystem destruction, ice melting, and loss of biodiversity. With a shift from 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees Celsius, the number of people affected by climate system destruction will be tens of millions more, and the effects will be catastrophic and uncontrollable.
Overall, Cop26 failed with respect to the so-called sectoral agreements, which dealt with specific aspects of combating climate change. These were topics not agreed upon by all members and were only discussed among groups of countries. For example, the agreement on the use of fossil fuels only predicts a gradual reduction in coal consumption as an energy source, rather than its elimination—a gradual reduction instead of a phased exit.
More than half of the countries signed a pledge to stop deforestation by 2030. China, India, and Russia withdrew from the plan to reduce methane emissions. Additionally, leading automotive industry countries like Germany, Japan, the United States, and China refused to sign an agreement that all cars sold between 2035 and 2040 would be electric.
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Cop27 will be an opportunity for the 197 countries, plus the European Union, members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to discuss the economic and financial tools needed to achieve the goals set in the Paris Agreements and to find a suitable and practical solution.
In fact, while previous conferences focused on defining common goals and discussing actions to be implemented, Cop27 should create mechanisms for implementing these goals and strategies. The topic to be addressed in Egypt will be the damages of climate change, technically referred to as Loss and Damage.
The definition of Loss and Damage includes both economic impacts on infrastructure, agricultural production, and business activities, as well as non-economic losses, such as biodiversity, ecosystems, cultural heritage, and individual health.
Although the discussion of losses caused by global warming has been a main topic of negotiations in UN climate change conventions for years, there has never been a possibility of reaching a definitive agreement on financial mechanisms to support the most affected countries. During Cop25 in 2019 in Madrid, governments established the Santiago Network, which serves as an operational arm for the Warsaw Mechanism.
The Warsaw Mechanism was, in fact, a general commitment signed during Cop19, aiming to support the most vulnerable countries in facing climate change. However, these two tools failed to unlock the necessary funding, and no results were achieved.
While it was expected that Cop26 would give special importance to the Warsaw Mechanism and the Santiago Network and decide to establish a fund to compensate the poorest and most vulnerable countries for climate damages caused by the wealthiest countries, the negotiations held in Glasgow concluded with a document that only emphasized the need for this fund and, due to the inability to reach an agreement on the details of financial mechanisms, referred further discussions to the next negotiation session, Cop27.
Proposals on the Table
On the sidelines of the recently concluded United Nations General Assembly, Denmark has pledged to support countries that are highly vulnerable to climate change and has announced a figure for this purpose. By doing so, Denmark will be the first country to pay compensation for Loss and Damage. Australia may be the second country to follow this path.
In fact, at the end of September, the United Nations Human Rights Committee announced that the Morrison government should compensate the residents of the Torres Strait Islands for the damages incurred due to insufficient action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, alongside independently undertaken actions, the member countries of the Climate Change Convention should agree on a joint strategy to support countries in need of Loss and Damage funding.
In this regard, the proposals on the table are varied. Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, agrees with the idea of taxing the profits of fossil fuel companies, based on the logic that those who pollute and those who profit from climate destruction should pay. Additionally, the option of supporting the issuance of long-term, low-interest instruments to finance projects related to sustainability and energy transition is being discussed.
With the commencement of Cop27 and on the occasion of the annual joint meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in October, criticisms are being heard from those who want these institutions to commit more to financing green projects.
National Interests vs. Global Interests
To understand and perhaps even predict future developments, two elements should be considered during Cop27. First, the fact that global warming knows no borders. Greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, along with the destruction of the climate system that has enabled life on our planet for thousands of years, affect all countries, regardless of who is more responsible.
However, instead of negotiating joint strategies and cooperating, governments prefer national climate policies, which might be seen in this conference as well. Although combating climate change will only be effective when all countries in the world are in a position to implement carbon dioxide emission reduction policies, any attempt to achieve carbon neutrality in one country is futile if the neighboring government continues to emit it.
Another element that affects the outcomes of this conference is the fact that one of the global consequences of the invasion of Ukraine was the rise in energy prices. Worse still is the recent decision by OPEC Plus to cut oil production to increase the price of crude oil. Faced with the risks threatening their energy security, countries are moving in the opposite direction of what they wanted in previous climate conferences.
To diversify their supply and national energy mix, several countries are reopening their coal power plants and exploring shale gas extraction through fracking and refining for the construction of new pipelines and reconversion to gas. All these actions have destructive effects on the climate and environment and hinder the transition to clean energy sources.
In this conference, hosted by Egypt and currently underway, studying how the Ukraine war and the gas crisis affect countries’ ability to agree on financial mechanisms for Loss and Damage and increase global actions to address the climate crisis is crucial. Given the preparations for this session of Cop27 and the experience of past conferences, it is expected that this year as well, the final document will list vague and insufficient commitments to reduce harmful gas emissions and control the climate disaster.
This year, the worst possible scenario could likely be a return to fossil fuels instead of accelerating the use of renewable energies, although the latter—renewable energies—are the only safety, cost, and sustainability trifecta.
Other related articles have been published on Iran Gate.
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