I’ve Seen 21 Years of COP Failures. Paris Needs to Deliver Action, Not Talk
By Dr Adil Najam
Paris, France
I t was December 2009. I remember sitting on a plane on my way to Copenhagen . I wondered if this would be the historic moment when the world came to its senses.
There was hope in the air. Indeed, I was greeted by stickers on the subway that renamed Denmark’s capital “ Hopenhagen ”. I smiled.
There was widespread anticipation – nurtured frantically by the host nation – that the UN-sponsored climate summit (COP 15) would be “historic”. That the impasse on global climate change would be broken. That major CO 2 emitters – the US, EU, China, India – would agree on a meaningful binding agreement that would (a) limit their emissions, (b) support developing countries in their transition to low-emission futures, and (c) create a mechanism to assist vulnerable countries in coping with the costs of adaptation and climatic disasters that, by then, had already become inevitable.
Today I am again on a plane, on my way to Paris for COP 21 . This time, I am not holding my breath. Not smiling.
The hype around Paris is not dissimilar to what one remembers before Copenhagen. Except the aspiration is even lower, the proposals less bold. The scientific consensus on the threats posed by climate change even more definitive. And the interests of developing countries even more marginalized.
I am not a cynic – just old. Old enough to remember the dashed hopes of Kyoto ( COP 3 , 1997), the purposeful energy of Berlin ( COP 1 , 1995), the naïve optimism of Rio de Janeiro in 1992 where the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) was first adopted, and even the calls for urgency when the negotiation process was first launched by the United Nations in 1990.
Most of all, I am old enough to realize that 11 December, when the Paris COP 21 officially ends, will mark to the day the 25th anniversary of the start of these negotiations.
Let that fact sink in: we have now been talking about an international agreement for a quarter of a century. We have no agreement. And there is none in sight. One has to wonder if all the hot air that has been generated by all this talk was worth the carbon cost of all our globe-trotting to these COPs.
Yet, talk is all that is on offer at Paris. Any mention of a “binding” agreement is squashed as being unrealistic, given the peculiar sensibilities of the US Congress. The sensitivities of the European Union, especially hosts France, to another Copenhagen-style failure have conspired to produce a constant ratcheting down of aspiration.
Instead, we are told to put faith in the ridiculously named INDCs – the intended nationally determined contributions. Major emitters were adamant that they could not make any “commitments” or “pledges”. Those, of course, sound like things that have to be actually done. “Intentions”, on the other hand, are fungible. They are voluntary, even optional.
Some INDCs do, indeed, make bold claims . But, in many cases, we are expected to believe that countries that chose to not fulfil their binding Kyoto commitments will now be faithful to these voluntary intentions. In other cases, the intention is kicked so much into the future or riddled with so many caveats as to become meaningless.
Meanwhile, in the real world, emissions continue to pile on and impacts stack. Many of the most vulnerable countries have such low emissions of their own that they can do nothing themselves to remedy the problem that they did nothing to cause.
For example, my own country, Pakistan, contributes less than 1% of global emissions, but is a frontline vulnerable state. Melting glaciers, messed-up monsoons, intense heat waves, erratic and severe floods: these are not just projections for the future, these are realities Pakistan is already having to adapt to. Research suggests that by 2040, agriculture productivity could drop by 8-10% ; by 2050, the cost of adaptation could be as high as $14bn a year.
Vulnerable developing nations need climate change to stabilize at 1.5C or less. The INDCs cannot deliver that.
Vulnerable nations worry most about adaptation – and adaptation is already marginalized on the COP 21 agenda.
I am on my way to Paris. I still hold hope, but not much.
Without a binding agreement, without a relentless focus on limiting climate change to 1.5C, all that Paris offers is more talk. For that, it is already too late.
It is time for action, Paris friends. Not empty promises.
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