COP24 agreement sidesteps financial issues
By Euronews • last
updated: 16/12/2018
COP24 agreement sidesteps financial issues
The conference President did his best to whip up enthusiasm
from delegates - but there’s been a lukewarm reception from observers to the
COP24 climate change deal agreed on Saturday by some 200 nations in Katowice,
Poland.
The agreement is short on hard pledges, but for Michal
Kurtyka the important thing is that progress is being made.
“As I already said on Thursday night,” the COP24 President
said. “This deal hangs in fragile balance. We will all have to give in order to
gain. We will all have to be courageous to look into the future and make yet
another step for the sake of humanity.”
A 156-page rule book fleshes out details on how to implement
the 2015 Paris agreement.
“I am very very happy,” said German Environment minister
Svenja Schulze. “This is the second time that the world says 'yes' to the Paris
climate agreement. In Paris, we said what our goals were and here, we agreed on
the rules for getting there – and with the whole world! That's an enormous
achievement.”
The target is to limit global warming well below 2 degrees
centigrade. The rulebook covers issues such as how countries should establish
and monitor emission reduction plans. But it’s less clear on how a pledge of
€90 billion to poorer countries will be financed - or on how a carbon credit
scheme might work.
World’s nations agree on rules to implement Paris climate
deal
The deal is an elegant compromise, but falls short of
bringing global warming under control.
By KALINA
OROSCHAKOFF AND PAOLA TAMMA 12/15/18,
10:37 PM CET Updated 12/15/18, 10:39 PM CET
KATOWICE, Poland — It’s a wrap.
After two weeks of tense negotiations, nearly 200
governments agreed late Saturday on a rulebook to implement the 2015 Paris
Agreement.
The final deal is a careful balance between the interests of
rich nations keen on robust transparency and reporting rules to track
emissions, emerging countries aiming to protect their economic interests, and
poor and vulnerable nations depending on greater financial support to address
climate impacts.
“This deal hangs in fragile balance. We will all have to
give in order to gain,” said Michał Kurtyka, the Polish COP24 president.
But it falls short of the radical action that many climate
scientists say needs to happen to prevent global warming from wreaking havoc on
the planet. Decades of climate talks have run into the same problem — the
measures needed to rein in climate change are politically unpalatable. The
summit held in Poland's coal capital of Katowice was no different.
Despite a recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warning that a world in which warming is limited
to 1.5 degrees Celsius is vastly preferable to one where warming goes to 2
degrees, the summit, under pressure from oil exporters such as the U.S., failed
to clearly welcome the report's findings.
“The majority of the rulebook for the Paris Agreement has
been created, which is something to be thankful for. But the fact countries had
to be dragged kicking and screaming to the finish line shows that some nations
have not woken up to the urgent call of the IPCC report," said Mohamed
Adow, international climate lead for Christian Aid, a U.K. charity.
Ministers and negotiators pulled all-nighters over the past
week to tie together a text more than 100 pages long that sets out how the world
will hit the climate accord's long-term goals of limiting global warming to
well below 2 degrees Celsius and ideally 1.5 degrees.
The deadlock was broken by all sides giving way. Rich
nations agreed to put more money on the table to help poorer countries deal
with the impact of global warming, and to give developing countries some leeway
in meeting the rules on cutting their emissions. In return, developing nations
agreed on common reporting requirements to track countries’ emissions reduction
efforts — something that will apply to all countries.
What's in the deal
Under the deal, developed countries agreed to give more
information on their past and future financial contributions for developing
countries. They also agreed to start discussions in November 2020 on setting a
new collective climate finance goal going beyond the earlier target of $100
billion a year by 2020 that rich nations pledged to meet in 2010.
Significantly, that's after the next U.S. presidential
election, which may see a less climate-skeptic president than Donald Trump in
the White House. They also agreed — for the first time — on a broad assessment
of developing countries’ financial needs.
The final deal also saw wealthy nations agreeing to give
greater recognition to the loss and damage caused by climate change in a global
review on how countries are doing in meeting the Paris deal goals.
And it includes a common set of rules to report on countries’
emissions reduction efforts applying from 2024. In a compromise that recognizes
different national capabilities, developing and emerging economies can choose
to get leeway on the detail of reporting, but have to explain how they plan to
improve their reporting over time. The system also carves out a special status
for highly vulnerable and developing countries such as small island states,
which can choose whether to report at all.
That’s been a priority for the EU and rich nations such as
the U.S. which have long said a new climate regime must apply to all countries
— especially emerging powerhouses (and economic rivals) such as China. The
agreement was made possible when China broke ranks with other emerging
economies earlier this week, and said it could support uniform standards.
In a gesture to climate-vulnerable and island nations,
European nations, Canada, and some Latin American countries agreed to require
greater climate efforts by 2020 and clearly recognize the findings of the IPCC
report — an issue that became highly politicized in the talks.
Last week, four oil and gas exporting countries — the U.S.,
Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait — rejected formally welcoming the report, wary
of being tied to its implications.
“Two degrees is something that we need to have, 1.5 degrees
is something that we need to aspire to,” said a Saudi delegate.
That caused a major outcry. In the end, the compromise text
"welcomes the timely completion" of the report, and invites countries
to “demonstrate … their enhanced ambition” during a September summit convened
by the U.N. secretary-general. However, it falls short of calling for global
climate efforts to be aligned with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees,
something small island states and vulnerable countries had pushed for.
"Countries such as the USA, Saudi Arabia, Russia,
Australia and Brazil have clearly not shown up prepared to do what they said
they would. Without more homework nations are not going to solve the climate
crisis," said Adow.
One highly contentious issue that threatened to upset the
Katowice summit — highly technical rules over setting up a market mechanism
that allows countries to buy carbon credits to offset their emissions — was
postponed to next year’s climate talks, due to take place in Chile.
Authors:
Kalina Oroschakoff
and Paola Tamma
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