Visionless climate summit hit by ‘lack of political leadership’

 

Visionless climate summit hit by ‘lack of political leadership’

 

Boris Johnson wants COP26 to be a ‘landmark’ but it’s currently in limbo.

 

BY KARL MATHIESEN

February 19, 2021 6:00 am

https://www.politico.eu/article/visionless-cop26-hit-by-lack-of-political-leadership/

 

A global climate summit is coming to Britain, but no one organizing it — including Prime Minister Boris Johnson — knows precisely what it is supposed to achieve.

 

When world leaders arrive in Glasgow in the first week of November for COP26 (pandemic willing), they will have already made their big commitments to cut carbon emissions.

 

Unless the hosts, or someone else, come up with a vision for something specific they can agree on in Scotland — aligning climate goals with the Paris Agreement and end dates for coal power or CO2-producing cars are being considered — the meeting could end up as little more than a photo opp, speeches and drinking Scotch.

 

The U.K. has one of the clearest mandates for progress ever handed to the hosts of the annual U.N. climate talks. That's thanks to public anxiety about the heating planet; the economic, financial and political winds blowing mostly in the right direction; the 5-year-old Paris Agreement boosted by the reentry of the U.S.; and Johnson staking the diplomatic credibility of the post-Brexit U.K. on the talks.

 

Speaking to the Munich Security Conference on Friday, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry called the conference "our last, best hope” to hold warming at 1.5 degrees.

 

“If there's more political energy, you can do more. So why not do more?” said Nick Mabey, an adviser to the COP26 presidency and the chief executive of the E3G think tank.

 

If you ask British officials what COP26 will achieve, the answer is a treacle of broad aspirations.

 

"We want COP26 to mark the moment the world embarked on an irreversible and accelerating transition to a low carbon economy, from which no one is left behind,” said a Cabinet Office spokesperson.

 

That means, the spokesperson added, “a tangible demonstration of a collective commitment to achieve real progress as well as clear progress across all mandated negotiations for COP26."

 

Of those two outcomes, the first won’t happen in Glasgow. The second might, but few are likely to notice.

 

National targets for long- and short-term emissions cuts, which the U.N. and U.K. have asked governments to present ahead of the talks, have already started to arrive. If acted on, these would bring the world much closer to the Paris Agreement’s main goal of holding warming “well below 2 degrees” than anyone expected a year ago.

 

But by the time COP26 rolls around, those pledges will have been lodged and tallied by the U.N., leaving little for the conference to do but take note of how far from safety the world remains.

 

PR challenge

That means formal legal negotiations in Glasgow will be dominated by highly contentious rules that govern the international trading of carbon credits — the permits that allow companies to emit a given amount of greenhouse gases. Weak rules could undermine the credibility of the Paris Agreement. But for the public, it’s a remote and mostly inscrutable issue that isn't nearly as sexy as, for example, an effort to rein in funding for fossil fuels.

 

“If you turn up and say we all agreed this thing in the text, people will go, ‘Yeah, but you're still funding gas and oil projects from your public banks,’” said Mabey. “That doesn't work. I just don't think that passes the giggle test, let alone the Greta test,” he said in reference to Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg.

 

The public relations challenge was apparent last week during an off-the-record briefing with COP26 officials, which left journalists bemused.

 

 

“It didn’t feel like there was a message they were trying to get across in any way,” one reporter from a U.K. national newspaper said.

 

“It's gonna be a comms mess,” said another journalist on the call. “I genuinely have no idea what they want out of COP26 in terms of actual outcomes. It's a mystery,”

 

The root problem isn't messaging, say observers, but substance.

 

A senior climate campaigner who informally advises the U.K. government said: “The COP26 communications team is hamstrung by a lack of political leadership at No. 10, and until No. 10 can demonstrate what this meeting is about and its importance, the COP communications team will struggle to deliver a coherent story.”

 

Two questions arise from the vacuum: what to do and whose job is it?

 

Possibilities for deals at COP26 being discussed among campaigners, summit officials and advisers include mandating a date for when national pledges will align with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Also mooted are deals to align financial regulation or phase out coal power, internal combustion engines and international funding for new fossil fuel projects.

 

Taxing carbon

The danger of coming up with a specific agenda was made clear when Downing Street floated the idea of creating a club of nations, which would use carbon border taxes to protect their industries against imports from countries doing less to cut their emissions.

 

Johnson had originally intended for the grouping to be a feature of the Glasgow talks, said Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who consults regularly with the U.K. government.

 

But the concept is by its nature divisive and could blow up what's supposed to be a consensus-driven climate conference. “[Johnson] definitely can't do a carbon club. Because he can't be the referee and the player on the pitch,” said Mabey. “It’s just something economists who know nothing about climate change come up with.”

 

“I think he has changed his mind, hopefully, [and decided] to put that in G7,” said Tubiana, referring to the rich-country club led by the U.K. this year. But even switching forums, which was reported by Bloomberg earlier this month, has already drawn ire from Australia.

 

Shuffling carbon border taxes off to another venue keeps the temperature down in Glasgow, but risks leaving the U.K. with few deals to make.

 

“That's the job of the presidency: to create a package,” said Tubiana, who was France’s lead negotiator and drafter of the Paris Agreement. “In Paris, of course, we created that package much ahead of Paris itself … [The U.K.] can have that still, but the time is difficult for them, and by May or June, they should have the line very, very well defined.”

 

Then there is the role of Johnson himself.

 

Direction from the top has been scattershot. A week after the carbon club idea leaked, Johnson told the U.K. parliament he wanted COP26 to be a “landmark event, not just for tackling climate change but for biodiversity,” ignoring the very separate COP15 on biodiversity that China will host this year.

 

That doesn't create a strong mandate for COP26 President Alok Sharma.

 

Johnson is also not getting much help from the U.S. in setting a summit agenda.

 

The new U.S. administration, with its zealous climate envoy Kerry, has flagged its intention to step up action on climate finance for poorer countries and green debt relief. That would be driven through meetings of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and G20. U.S. President Joe Biden will help bring in tougher climate pledges by hosting a summit of major economies in April.

 

Kerry said on Friday that it was “simply not acceptable” for countries to come to Glasgow with only a long term aspiration.

 

“We all need to develop not just a number, but a roadmap for how we will actually make the dramatic progress we need to make,” he said.

 

But, if the White House has specific goals for COP26, they have not been made public. 

 

Tick tock

The longer it takes for someone to step up and put something concrete on the table, the less time there will be for diplomacy.

 

"We have a real shot at the U.K. leading the world in the fight against global warming," Conservative MP and former U.K. Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom wrote in the Times this week. "But I worry that it must not become too little too late. It takes time and real impetus to agree major action on the global stage."

 

That space contracts further when COVID-19 is factored in. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has already asked countries to run all pre-COP negotiations online.

 

With no guarantee anyone will actually be physically in Glasgow in November, the concern, said Netherlands climate envoy Marcel Beukeboom, is that the climate talks “onion” will get peeled down to the negotiations.

 

“And then you look at the core,” he said, “that indeed could be a bit small by itself. Especially if you don’t adjust your expectations.”

 

This article has been updated with Kerry's comments at the Munich conference.