With nine months to go before the summit, or Cop26, the UK faces a steep climb to provide the confidence and diplomatic lift the world needs to galvanise political leaders into taking more ambitious action and curb greenhouse gas emissions growth.

But preparations for the summit have been off to a rocky start – and the job of rallying countries into bolder action could prove to get tougher yet.

Last week, UK prime minister Boris Johnson sacked former clean growth minister Claire O’Neill as Cop26 president. Her replacement is expected to be announced as part of a cabinet reshuffle in the coming days.

As she went, O’Neill slammed Johnson for showing no leadership over preparations for the summit, which she said were “miles off track”. “He doesn’t get it,” she told the BBC of the summit’s diplomatic gravitas.

Johnson launched Cop26 on Tuesday without a president to oversee the summit, nor a clear strategy to leverage the world’s largest emitters into submitting tougher climate plans before the Glasgow talks.

He urged all countries to follow the UK’s lead in setting net zero emissions goals before the end of the year – a goal that the UK itself is not on track to meet and that none of the world’s large emerging economies have signed up for so far.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is also failing to show enthusiasm for upgrading their climate plans.

Under a UN decision to implement the Paris Agreement, February 9 is the theoretical deadline for countries to communicate new or updated climate plans this year. Only the Marshall Islands and Suriname have so far met the deadline.

In a must-read report, Alister Doyle looks at the legality and implications of the missed deadline.

Back in the UK, Johnson does have a vision, one of a “global Britain” after Brexit.

How the government balances this double act of re-defining its place in the world while calling on leader to take greater climate action will be key to the success of its leadership this year.

Indeed, some confidence remains that the UK’s diplomatic leverage could still deliver a positive outcome at Cop26. But in private, negotiators are expressing concerns that time for action is now strikingly tight.

African youths’ call

When African youth activist Vanessa Nakate was cropped out from a picture at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it was one example too many of the lack of attention to the voices of those that are most affected by climate impacts.

The incident, which sparked outrage across the world, also led young African activists to highlight the lack of action by both African and world leaders to tackle the climate crisis on the continent.

“The biggest threat to action in my country and in Africa is the fact that those who are trying as hard as possible to speak up are … not able to tell their stories,” warned Nakate.

Turbines

A record 3.6 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity was installed across Europe in 2019. As the cost of building offshore wind farms continues to fall, the economic incentive for the continent to embrace wind power should be a given.

But the pace of deployment is too slow to meet the EU’s 2050 net zero emissions target, according to the industry.

The EU Commission estimates Europe will need between 230 and 450 GW of offshore wind by 2050 to decarbonise its energy system. At the end of 2019, total capacity reached 22 GW. Still a long way to go.

This week’s top stories

• World misses symbolic February deadline to ratchet up climate action before Cop26
• UK walks diplomatic tightrope for 2020 climate summit after shaky start
• Offshore wind deployment boom ‘too slow’ to meet EU climate target
• Democratic contenders in Iowa caucus aim to rejoin Paris accord in green goals
• UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020
• UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit
• Youth activists urge African governments to do more to curb climate change

The post ‘Miles off track’ – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The tension between the UK government’s priorities was on display this week as Prime Minister Boris Johnson both set out his vision for a global Britain and formally launched Cop26.

Outlining his “global Britain” campaign, Johnson declared his government was “ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once”.

Much hope rides on the expectations that the game will include climate diplomacy.

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of UN Climate Change, told Climate Home News that Cop26 in Glasgow “was a post-Brexit opportunity to show that despite Brexit, Britain continues to have important leadership on global issues”.

But nine months before the UK is due to preside over the biggest diplomatic event it has ever hosted, there are no clear indications of how the government will deliver the confidence lift the world needs to deliver tougher climate targets.

UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020

At the Cop26 launch on Tuesday, Johnson, who had just sacked Claire O’Neill, the UK’s former clean growth minister, as Cop president, had little to say about the government’s diplomatic strategy for the summit.

He called on every country to follow the UK’s lead by setting net zero emissions goal this year and announced plans to bring forward a UK ban on sales of new diesel and petrol cars by five years, to 2035.

The climate talks in Glasgow have been billed as a critical moment for countries to revive the multilateralism that underpinned the Paris Agreement and leverage the world’s largest emitters into taking bolder climate action.

O’Neill, who was appointed Cop26 president in July, would have been the first Cop president not to hold any ministerial role.  The government said a minister would be replacing her.

Some observers interpreted the move as a positive signal that Johnson’s team understands the need for a political heavyweight to take the lead.

But the fallout between Johnson and O’Neill has also raised questions about the Prime Minister’s grasp of the diplomatic gravitas of hosting such an important climate meeting.

In a strongly worded rebuke letter, O’Neill accused Johnson of not giving the summit the attention and resources it needed, with preparations “miles off track”.

“In my judgement this isn’t a pretty place to be and we owe the world a lot better,” she wrote, calling on the government to make the climate talks the top of its priorities.

“You had a vision for Brexit and you got Brexit done….Please get this done too,” she urged. Johnson has called on the EU to agree a Canada-style free trade deal with the UK before the end of the year.

UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit

Diplomats have told CHN the UK’s work on Cop26 had only just started when O’Neill was dropped from the role. They expressed eagerness for the UK to start its diplomatic work as soon as possible.

Speaking to CHN before O’Neill was removed, Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said the UK was “expected to be able to do joined-up governance” without having to start again from scratch.

Johnson is anticipated to announce a new Cop26 president as part of a cabinet reshuffle, reported to take place next week.

The late timing of the announcement is putting more pressure on the UK to deliver greater ambition while finalising a number of negotiation issues left unresolved at the last UN talks in Madrid.

“Time is tight, but there is still enough time and enough leverage in the mix for the UK presidency to make some headway,” David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative, told CHN.

Once a new Cop26 president is appointed, it will be “a matter of rolling out that diplomatic effort as quickly and assertively as possible,” he added.

Possible candidates to replace O’Neill are already under intense scrutiny. For Jennifer Tollmann, an expert in climate diplomacy at think tank E3G, the new appointment will be “key to signalling to the rest of the world how serious [the UK government] is about the Cop”.

The new president will need to have good background understanding of the climate process, diplomatic experience and the commitment and determination to make the summit a success, Waskow and Tollmann agreed.

“It’s really important that the Prime Minister is fully attached to the outcome of the Cop because otherwise we will not get the top political attention that the Cop needs,” Nick Mabey, chief executive of E3G, said in an event at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London last month.

Among those rumoured for the job are former environment minister Michael Gove, former foreign secretary William Hague and environment and climate minister Zac Goldsmith.

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Inside the Cop26 presidency team, about 150 civil servants have been brought in to push ambition to the rest of the world. “Diplomats are ready to go, they are waiting for marching orders,” a UK official told CHN.

Even with the best geopolitical outlook, the scale of the Cop26 challenge is enormous.

Countries are under pressure to enhance their climate plans to bridge the gap between current emissions reduction pledges and what is necessary to limit global warming “well below 2C” above pre-industrial times.

Global emissions need to fall by 7.6% every year until 2030 for the world to be on track to limit warming to the toughest goal in the Paris Agreement of 1.5C, according to UN Environment. And global carbon emissions rose 0.6% in 2019 to a new record high.

Under the Paris deal, countries are due to “communicate or update” their 2030 climate plans by the end of the year. Countries have also agreed that successive climate plans “will represent a progression” and reflect their “highest possible ambition”.

This rachet-up mechanism, which underpins the Paris accord, is being tested for the first time.

But the geopolitical momentum for climate action is stalled, making the task ahead even greater.

The US will officially leave the Paris Agreement on 4 November, a day after the US presidential election, under a withdrawal by President Donald Trump. Leading Democratic candidates say they will immediately apply to rejoin if they beat him.

Irreconcilable rift cripples UN climate talks as majority stand against polluters

Meanwhile, entrenched nationalism, a trade war and slower growth have seen China and India bump climate action down their priority list.

Efforts to bolster momentum last year have failed. At Cop25, countries failed to agree on the rules to set up a global carbon market – an issue that needs to be resolved this year – and failed to make a clear call for more ambition.

“Cop25 really increased the diplomatic and confidence lift the UK needs to provide,” Mabey said.

The UK presidency is now largely dependent on the outcome of an EU-China summit in October, when the EU is hoping to broker a climate deal with Beijing to inject momentum into the process.

At home, the UK’s credibility lies on its own ability to develop a concrete plan to achieve its 2050 net zero emissions goal.

Last year, the UK was the first major developed economy to set a net zero goal into law. Under the Paris Agreement, all countries are expected to work out “mid-century, long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies” by the end of 2020.

“The year ahead is an acid test of the new [UK] government’s climate credibility,” Chris Stark, chief executive of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, wrote last week.

But analysis by the environmental think tank Green Alliance published on Monday found the UK to be off track to meet its 2050 target.

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For Mabey, the Paris Agreement hangs in the balance of the Cop26 outcome. “Failure is really on the agenda for Glasgow. If Glasgow fails then the Paris regime fails, and we lose another five to ten years building another regime,” he said.

In her letter to Johnson, O’Neill outlined a seven-point action plan to ramp up climate action. Strengthening countries’ climate plans and establishing carbon neutrality as the climate ambition goal topped the list.

Introducing a “properly-funded global package for adaptation and resilience building”, a focus on nature-based solutions and decarbonising finance flows also made the list.

The appointment of former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney and incoming UN special envoy for climate action and finance and former We Mean Business CEO Nigel Topping as the UK’s climate action champion has further boosted the UK’s finance agenda.

Kyte told CHN it was “absolutely appropriate to put finance right at the top of [Cop26’s] agenda” both in a real economy sense but also as part of the negotiations.

“Finance is the essential ingredient in moving the transition forward quickly,” said Kyte. “It is the essential glue for speeding up the action that we need.”

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“We were the first to industrialise, so we have a responsibility to lead the way,” he told the audience of selected reporters at the Science Museum in London on Tuesday to outline plans for Cop26 in Glasgow.

“We have to deal with out CO2 emissions and that is why the UK is calling for us to get to net zero as soon as possible – for every country to announce credible targets to get there [sic]. That is what we want in Glasgow,” he said during the event attended by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and British naturalist broadcaster David Attenborough.

The UK and Italy won a joint a bid to host this year’s critical climate summit, with Milan hosting a preparatory meeting and a youth event and Glasgow hosting the summit.

The UK was the first major economy to set a net zero emissions target by 2050 in law last summer and Johnson said he would “lead a global call to reach net zero”.

Johnson launched Cop26 despite the fact the summit is lacking a president to facilitate it.

His speech was overshadowed by an intensifying fallout with Claire O’Neill, the UK’s former clean growth minister, who was sacked as Cop26 president on Friday evening.

UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit

Hours before Johnson’s speech, O’Neill made a blistering personal attack on Johnson accusing him of failing to understand the diplomatic gravitas of the summit.

“We have seen a huge lack of engagement and leadership,” she told the BBC of Johnson’s attitude towards Cop26. “He also admitted to me that he doesn’t really understand it,” she said, adding that “others around him do”.

In an explosive letter addressed to Prime Minister Johnson, O’Neill said preparations for the summit she was in charge of were “miles off track” and accused Johnson of not giving the summit the attention and resources it needed.

In her letter, O’Neill described government in-fighting over who should be accountable for the talks preparations, ballooning budgets and the lack of planning for international engagements to the summit.

“In my judgement this isn’t a pretty place to be and we owe the world a lot better,” she wrote, calling for “a whole government reset” which would move the summit to the “Premier League” of the government’s priorities.

“You had a vision for Brexit and you got Brexit done. Please get this done too,” she added.

Johnson did not respond to questions over his motives for sacking O’Neill.

Rebecca Newsom, head of politics for Greenpeace UK, said the UK government needed “to rise above petty politics” and “lead by example” by “get[ting] its own house in order”.

Youth activists urge African governments to do more to curb climate change

Some observers had hoped O’Neill’s replacement would be announced during the summit’s launch given the short timescale to the November summit. The next Cop26 president is now expected to be announced during a UK cabinet reshuffle tipped to take place next week.

Alex Scott, senior policy advisor on Cop26 for the environmental think tank E3G, told Climate Home News a new appointment needed to be made as soon as possible.

“We are really hoping that there is some clarity on this as soon as possible because of how late in the day it is now and the gravity of the diplomatic task ahead,” she said.

“What this process is going to need is a little more Boris Johnson level engagement. We need to see a lot more commitment from the prime minister on the Cop strategy,” she added.

Cop26 is widely considered the most important climate summit since the Paris summit in 2015.

Countries are under pressure to increase their climate plans to bridge the gap between current emissions reduction pledges and what is necessary to limit global warming “well below 2C” above pre-industrial times.

Current temperature projections set warming to be on track for more than 3C by the end of the century.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are also due to publish their long-term decarbonisation strategies before the end of the year.

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Last year, the UK won praise for setting a national carbon neutrality goal for 2050 but has taken few steps to develop a comprehensive plan to meet it.

Analysis by the environmental think tank Green Alliance published on Monday found the UK was off track to meet its 2050 target.

Much of the UK’s credibility for demanding the world to achieve carbon neutrality by the middle of the century relies on its own ability to come up with a meaningful plan to reach its own 2050 target.

Johnson used his speech to launch a “year of climate action” in the UK. He also announced plans to bring forward a ban on petrol and diesel cars, which includes hybrid cars, to 2035 – five years earlier than initially planned.

Responding to the announcement, the Green Alliance said this was a “move in the right direction” but “isn’t nearly ambitious enough” to meet the UK’s decarbonisation goals. Instead, it called for the ban to come into force in 2030.

Newsom said cars were “an important piece of the puzzle” towards decarbonising the UK economy but could not be seen in isolation.

“Expanding airports, handing out new licenses for oil drilling, and putting billions of taxpayers’ money behind climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects all over the world will not get us to the right destination,” she added.

On Tuesday, the UK’s aviation sector also announced a commitment to become carbon neutral by 2050 mainly by offsetting flights’ emissions – a measure that heavily relies on the use of carbon offsets.

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In a short statement on Friday afternoon, the UK government said O’Neill, the UK’s former clean growth minister, “will no longer be UK Cop26 president”.

The move is part of an imminent UK cabinet reshuffle initiated by Johnson. The structure of the UK government is expected to change as the UK prepares to formally leave the EU at the end of a transition period in December.

The government statement said Johnson was “grateful to Claire for her work preparing for what will be a very successful and ambitious climate change summit in Glasgow in November. Preparations will continue at pace for the summit, and a replacement will be confirmed shortly”.

O’Neill’s replacement will be a ministerial role, the statement added.

Johnson is expected to launch “a year of climate action” in a speech on Tuesday.

UN relocates biodiversity talks to Italy from China after coronavirus emergency

In a tweet from the Cop26 presidency account, O’Neill said she was “very sad” at the news. She suggested the UK government “can’t cope” with an independent Cop team, which wasn’t led by a minister.

“Wishing the Cop team every blessing in the climate recovery emergency [sic],” she wrote.

O’Neill had already laid some of the ground work for the upcoming climate meeting, which is billed as a critical moment for countries to enhance their climate plans five years after the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The UK presidency only has nine months to leverage the world’s biggest emitters into taking more ambitious climate action.

Earlier this month, O’Neill met with the Indian government in New Delhi. She also travelled to the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum, when she had multiple meetings to prepare Cop26.

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