The equivalent of ten football pitches of tropical forests – 3.7 million hectares – were lost every minute in 2023 as the result of human activities and natural disasters, according to analysis carried out by Global Forest Watch.

While forest destruction slowed dramatically in Brazil and Colombia, this was offset by sharp increases in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Laos.

“The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss”, said Mikaela Weisse, Global Forest Watch Director at the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Tropical forests are one of the world’s best defenses against global warming, as they absorb greenhouse gases. But they are also where over 96% of human-made deforestation occurs worldwide, according to WRI.

Missing targets

While total tree loss in the tropics decreased slightly last year, analysts estimated human-caused deforestation driven by agriculture, commodities extraction and urban expansion continued rising. 

That’s despite a 10% reduction being needed every year to meet a pledge to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” signed by 145 countries, including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Initially introduced as part of a voluntary commitment by governments at Cop26 in Glasgow, the target was mentioned for the first time in a Cop decision at last December’s climate summit in Dubai.

Weisse said the goal “has always been an ambitious one” and “it will certainly be difficult” to ensure enough progress from all countries to meet the target.

“I still find a lot of hope in the fact that Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia have managed to massively curb their rates of forest loss in recent years”, she added. “Those countries have demonstrated how critical it is to have strong political will to combat deforestation”.

Lula’s deforestation busting

Brazil continued to be the country that lost the most tropical forest in 2023 because of the size of its immense rainforests. But its losses dropped by more than a third last year, reaching the lowest level since 2015.

Progress in Brazil coincided with the return to office of President Luiz Lula da Silva. In his first full year in the post, he strengthened law enforcement against illegal loggers, revoked anti-environmental measures introduced by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and extended Indigenous rights.

Brazil is planning to put the protection of forests at the heart of its climate summit in 2025, which is set to take place in Belém, known as the gateway to the Amazon rainforest.

“Holding Cop30 in the heart of the forest is a powerful reminder of our responsibility to keep the planet within our 1.5°C target”, said Marina Silva, Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, last December.

In neighbouring Colombia, the rate of tree loss dropped by half in 2023, primarily as a result of policies introduced by President Gustavo Petro.

Forest protection is among the goals being negotiated by the leftist government with armed groups as part of wider efforts to bring “total peace” and end decades of violence.

Experts have also suggested that criminal groups have taken it upon themselves to rein in illegal logging as a way to strengthen their hand in the discussions.

Progress lost

But positive developments in forest conservation in Brazil and Colombia have been all but cancelled out by tree losses spiralling out of control elsewhere.

In Bolivia, forest losses remained at record-breaking levels for a third year in a row, driven by uncontrolled expansion of soybean and beef production and exacerbated by exceptional wildfires.

The government, which has prioritised development and agricultural exports over forest protection, has not joined the 2030 pledge.

It was at loggerheads with Brazil at the Amazon Summit last year, when it opposed the inclusion of any references to the target in an outcome document signed by the leaders of eight countries.

Dramatic upticks in deforestation were also seen in Nicaragua, in Central America, and Laos, in South-East Asia, last year.

Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet

Nicaragua lost over 4% of its standing forest in 2023 alone, as the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega continued to turn a blind eye to illegal logging.

Disregard for the preservation of forests, and the respect of the rights of Indigenous people living there, is also shutting the country’s access to international financial support.

The UN’s Green Climate Fund pulled out of a forest conservation project last month after local community groups complained about a lack of protection in the face of escalating human rights violations in the area.

In Laos, forest loss nearly doubled last year reaching an all-time high. Rapid expansion of farming, primarily driven by Chinese investments, is believed to be the main cause.

Financial incentives

WRI’s Weisse said that, while the cases of Brazil and Colombia demonstrate the importance of political will in reversing deforestation, that alone will not be enough.

“Political winds continuously change”, she added. “In order for progress to endure in any of the above countries will likely take making it more valuable to keep forests standing than to cut them down”.

Carbon credits have long been touted as a primary way to achieve that. But their credibility has come under fire over the last few years as numerous schemes faced allegations of exaggerating climate claims and failing to safeguard local communities. Various efforts to strengthen their rules are underway.

Regulations are also being introduced on the demand side, blocking access to markets for goods produced on deforested land.

In the European Union, firms will soon have to demonstrate that seven commodities, including beef and soy, are not linked to deforestation. Commodities-producing countries, such as Indonesia, have attacked the regulations which they have branded as protectionist.

The post “Two steps forward, two steps back” – Governments off course for forest protection target appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nearly two years on, Climate Home News looks at how these commitments are holding up to the test of time.

• Methane Pledge
• Forest Pledge
• International Fossil Finance Pledge
• Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ)

METHANE PLEDGE

WHAT: Reduce human-made methane emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030. Cutting the amount of methane present in the atmosphere is important because it is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide despite having a shorter lifespan.

WHO: 104 countries, led by the US and the EU, signed up to the pledge when it was first announced at Cop26 in Glasgow. The number of signatories has since risen to 150. However, they only represent about half of global methane emissions as China, India and Russia – three of the world’s top four emitters – have not joined the coalition.

HOW IT IS GOING: The raw figures paint a fairly grim picture. Since Cop26, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has kept rising fast and it is now more than two and a half times its pre-industrial level.

Over half of the emissions come from human activities, like fossil fuel extraction, farming and landfills, with the rest caused by natural sources. Under current trajectories, total human-made methane emissions could rise by up to 13% between 2020 and 2030 – the pledge’s timeframe.

This graph shows the globally-averaged, monthly atmospheric methane concentration since 1983. Image credit: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

Targeting the oil and gas sector is seen by many as the easiest and fastest way to bring down emissions in the near term. Experts say existing technologies already provide cheap and effective ways to plug leaky infrastructure like pipelines and gas storage tanks.

However, the technological developments have not yet been converted into real, widespread action. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), methane emissions from oil and gas remained “stubbornly high” in 2022 even as the energy companies’ bumper profits made actions to reduce them cheaper than ever. “There is just no excuse”, the IEA chief Fatih Birol commented.

Raft of initiatives

But judging the pledge’s progress on current numbers only tells half the story, argued Jonathan Banks, global director of the methane programme at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). “Emissions are not going to turn around immediately,” he told Climate Home. “If you look at the work going into the pledge, building the funding and technical resources to bring emissions down, I think it could potentially be on track for success”.

A series of initiatives have been set up to help countries deliver on the pledge. The UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) is helping over 30 developed and developing countries to establish plans to achieve the 2030 target.

Canada has set out a strategy that it expects to reduce domestic methane emissions by “more than 35%” by 2030, compared to 2020.

Methane leaking from Chelmsford compressor station, UK on 15 October 2021, picked up by a special camera (Photo: Clean Air Task Force/ James Turitto)

The Global Methane Hub (GMH), a philanthropic organisation, is also supporting signatories of the methane pledge with technical assistance and funding. Carolina Urmeneta, a director at the GMH, told Climate Home News that over the last year, the group has focused its work on developing systems to monitor methane emissions rates from oil and gas and landfill installations using satellites.

She said reaching the 2030 target “is possible and cost-effective, but it is not easy. We need to improve data transparency and increase funding for projects with methane targets.”

Regulations drive

Some progress has also been made on the regulatory front. The USA introduced new rules to address methane emissions caused by oil and gas companies through the Inflation Reduction Act. Using a carrot-and-stick approach, it provides $1 billion in public subsidies to take action, while charging a fee for excessive emissions.

In May the European Parliament agreed on tougher measures to tackle methane emissions in the energy sector. The approved text calls for binding emission reduction targets, stronger obligations for fossil fuel operators to detect and repair leaky infrastructure and the application of the same measures to exporting countries outside of the bloc.

While the final rules are still being negotiated with the EU’s national governments, CATF’s Banks believes they could have a “huge global impact” if introduced in their current form. “The methane emissions associated with the gas Europe buys from the rest of the world is quite large, so such measures could really drive some change”.

New announcements are expected at Cop28 in Dubai, after the summit’s president Sultan Al Jaber set the phaseout of methane emissions in oil and gas by 2030 as one of his priorities. “More than 20 oil and gas companies have answered Cop28’s call,” he said this week. “And I see positive momentum as more are joining”. But the UAE has been accused of double standards as it failed to report methane emissions to the UN for a decade, as the Guardian reported.

While it has not signed the pledge, China is expected to announce its long-awaited methane plan at Cop28.

FOREST PLEDGE 

WHAT: End and reverse deforestation by 2030. Country leaders pledged to conserve forests, tackle wildfires, facilitate sustainable agriculture, support indigenous populations and “significantly” increase the provision of finance towards achieving those goals.

WHO: More than 140 countries joined the coalition. Signatories of the pledge – including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo – cover around 90% of the world’s forests. But major G20 powers such as India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and rainforest nations like Bolivia and Venezuela did not join the group.

HOW IT IS GOING:  Countries remain off track to reach the goal of the Glasgow pledge and end deforestation by 2030, according to an assessment done by a coalition of NGOs.

Across the world, tree loss recorded in 2022 was 21% higher than the level needed to be on course to reach zero in seven years’ time, the report said.

Source: Forest Declaration Assessment

In fact, the situation is getting worse. Global deforestation grew 4% last year, wiping out 6.6 million hectares of forest, according to the study. That’s a tree-covered area nearly as big as Ireland disappearing in one year.

“The world’s forests are in crisis. All these promises have been made to halt deforestation, to fund forest protection. But the opportunity to make progress is passing us by year after year,” said Erin Matson, a lead author of the Forest Declaration Assessment.

Saving the Three Basins means stopping fossil fuel expansion

There are important regional differences, however. While tropical Asia is faring better, with Indonesia and Malaysia on track to hit their targets, Latin America and the Caribbean are farthest off track.

The election of President Lula da Silva in Brazil has led to a reversal in the skyrocketing deforestation rates in the country, which hosts most of the Amazon rainforets.

But efforts to create a regional forest protection coalition have failed. At the Amazon summit in August, eight South American countries failed to agree on a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 following opposition from Bolivia and Venezuela.

An aerial view shows deforestation near a forest on the border between Amazonia and Cerrado in Nova Xavantina, Mato Grosso state, Brazil in 2021 (REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli)

While it included a larger number of countries, the Cop26 commitment was not entirely new: it repeated promises previously made in the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which by then had already failed to achieve some of its core targets.

Keen to avoid the same fate, self-declared “high ambition” countries launched a new initiative designed to deliver the pledge.

“High ambition” efforts

Chaired by the USA and Ghana, the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) has promised to spur global action and provide accountability.

Only a fifth of the original 140 signatories have joined the group so far, with Russia and Indonesia among the most notable absentees.

Christine Dragisic, who leads the forest team at the US State Department, said the goal is to create a “high-level community” that brings together governments, indigenous people, philanthropies, civil society and the private sector to drive action forward and hit the 2030 target.

“Can we do it? Yes. Is it going to be hard? Definitely. Does it require everybody to be at the table? For sure”, Dragisic told Climate Home.

An Indonesian ranger patrols a forest protected through a carbon credit project. Photo: Dita Alangkara/CIFOR

Since its launch last year, the FCLP has worked on a number of initiatives offering technical and financial solutions to forest nations, looking at the role of carbon markets and the forest economy in averting tree loss.

Finance gaps

As with most climate actions, however, it ultimately comes down to the question of money. “The delivery of climate finance is very important to achieve a lot of these targets and that is still very much lacking”, Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, director of climate change at Ghana’s forestry commission and co-chair of the FCLP, told Climate Home.

“The kind of finance we need is not finance for today or tomorrow, it’s finance for yesterday. We are already behind schedule. If it gets delivered fast there’s lots that we can do to close the gap that is now quite wide,” she added.

The Cop26 pledge was accompanied by a commitment from a group of rich nations to provide $12 billion in forest-related climate finance between 2021 and 2025. The money should be channeled to developing countries enacting concrete steps to halt forest loss.

The donor countries reported last year that they had provided $2.6 billion – over a fifth of the target amount – in 2021. They are expected to provide an update at Cop28.

INTERNATIONAL FOSSIL FINANCE PLEDGE

WHAT: End new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: 34 countries and five development banks – predominantly from wealthy cuontries – signed up to the pledge at Cop26. These included the G7 nations – with the exception of Japan – and most EU member states.

HOW IT IS GOING: Among the signatories that give lots of money to the energy sector, the vast majority have introduced policies in line with the promise made in Glasgow.

The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Finland and Sweden have stopped providing loans and guarantees for oil and gas extraction and processing overseas through their export credit agencies.

Their actions have shifted at least $5.7 billion per year in public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean energy, according to analysis by Oil Change International and E3G.

On the other hand, however, the USA, Italy and Germany have continued funding international fossil fuel projects in 2023 in breach of the pledge.

They were supposed to stop funding foreign fossil fuels by December 2022. But since then, they collectively approved over $3 billion in financial support to oil and gas overseas programmes.

Most of the funding comes in the form of state-backed guarantees provided by export credit agencies. These products limit the risk taken by companies selling services and goods in other countries, influencing investment.

Among the projects receiving backing from the US and Italy was the expansion of an oil refining facility in Indonesia’s Borneo.

The US Export-Import Bank justified its backing of the project by claiming it would allow Indonesia to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels. The Italian agency did not provide a motivation for the decision.

Germany and the US have also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into projects aiming to boost the production and trade of liquified natural gas (LNG), which has been more sought after since Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe cut back on Russian gas.

Political splits and carve-outs

In the US, efforts to comply with the Glasgow pledge have caused a split among senior officials in the Biden administration and in the federal agencies charged with disbursing the money, as Politico revealed.

The White House has drafted guidance underpinning the investments - without making it public -, but the final decisions are made by agencies like the US Export-Import Bank (Exim).

“It is a struggle to get US Exim to comply, so far they’ve ignored the Cop26 commitment”, says Nina Pusic from Oil Change International. “It will require a lot of political weight from the Biden administration and Congress.”

Indonesia delays coal closure plans after finance row with rich nations

Italy looks likely to keep funding fossil fuels overseas for years to come. Its policy guidance lays out a "gradual dismission of public support to new requests of fossil fuel projects", seeing support for gas extraction and production run into 2026. Oil processing and distribution projects should be excluded from the beginning of next year.

But Italy has also carved out a wide range of exceptions that allow its export credit agency to keep greenlighting support for fossil fuel projects on "national energy security" and "energy efficiency" grounds.

The FSRU Toscana LNG regasfication platform off the coast of Italy (Photo: OLT Offshore LNG Toscana)

Germany's main export credit agency has just introduced this month new policies restricting support for fossil fuel projects. However, it allows for financing the development of new gas fields and related transport facilities until 2025 when justified by "national security and in compliance with the Paris Agreement targets".

Investment in new coal, oil and gas production is regarded as incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a large number of climate scientists.

"Germany has a vast amount of fossil fuel transactions pending approval", says Oil Change International's Pusic. "The success of the new policy will be judged on the decisions made on those projects".

GLASGOW FINANCIAL ALLIANCE FOR NET ZERO (GFANZ)

WHAT: Commit to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest by aligning their portfolios and investment practices with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: Over 650 institutions across the financial sector, including banks, insurers, asset owners, asset managers, financial service providers, and investment consultants. Gfanz members represent 40% of global private financial assets. They are grouped together under eight independent net-zero financial alliances focused on specific branches of finance.

HOW IT IS GOING: It is not easy to gauge the progress of a wide-ranging initiative with loosely defined targets and a constellation of constituent parts.

GFANZ says it has made progress over the last two years by raising the ambition of financial institutions and by providing tools and guidance to turn commitments into action.

"Two years ago, not a single bank had set a science-based 2030 target. Now nearly all global, systemically important banks have voluntarily and independently set 2030 targets for oil and gas", a GFANZ spokesperson said.

Above all, the mere fact that the alliance still exists at all is a first - albeit limited - marker of success, after an especially tumultuous year.

The prospect of ending up in legal hot waters in the US, where Republicans have driven an anti-climate investment backlash, has dampened the enthusiasm of many leading signatories. The result is that parts of the alliance have been hemorrhaging members, while other components have resorted to watering down their requirements to assuage concerns.

Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, launched GFANZ at Cop26. Photo: World Economic Forum/Valeriano Di Domenico

Troubles started brewing in mid-2022 when a group of leading US banks threatened to pull out over fears of being sued because of having decarbonisation policies imposed by external parties. That's after US Republican politicians had accused financial institutions of breaching antitrust rules by grouping together in a climate cartel that limits opportunities for investors.

A month later, in October 2022, Gfanz dropped a key requirement for its members to sign up to the UN Race to Zero initiative - a verification body for corporate and financial sector pledges - which had been seen as a way to prevent greenwashing.

GFANZ told Climate Home that the alliances are still working with Race to Zero and "continue to note" its advice and guidance.

Heading for the door

Those US banks eventually ended up staying in but, despite the less stringent criteria, other influential members began heading for the door in droves soon after.

Vanguard, one of the world's biggest asset managers, quit the Net Zero Asset Managers' initiative - part of Gfanz - saying it wanted to "provide clarity to investors" and "speak independently on matters of importance" to them.

But it's the insurers' coalition, known as NZIA, that has suffered the biggest - nearly fatal - wounds. The group has lost nearly two-thirds of its members since the start of the year, with leading firms like Allianz, Zurich, Munich Re and Lloyd's of London throwing in the towel.

Again a major driver for the mass exit was a letter written in May by 23 Republican attorney generals accusing signatories of advancing "an activists climate agenda" with "serious detrimental effects on the residents" of their states. The spark for this was the alliance's initial obligation to its members to set emission reduction targets by the end of July.

Staring at the real prospect of shutting down, the insurers' alliance again watered down its requirements, becoming effectively toothless.

To triple renewable energy, the Global South needs finance

"NZIA member companies have no obligation to set or publish targets", wrote the UN Environment Programme (Unep) - convener of the initiative -  in a clarification letter. "Each company who chooses to be a member of the NZIA unilaterally and independently decides on the steps on its path towards net zero."

Meanwhile, GFANZ says its members have submitted over 300 interim targets "representing clear progress in implementing commitments" to divert finance in line with net zero goals.

But while plans have been announced, many GFANZ members are also being accused of not putting their money where their mouth is. 161 members of the coalition have collectively invested hundreds of billions of dollars into the expansion of the coal, oil and gas industries since they joined the group, according to research by campaigning group Reclaim Finance.

A GFANZ spokesperson said "it’s clear a lot of work still needs to be done to ensure the world is deploying capital consistent with a 1.5C pathway".

"GFANZ is helping to support financial institutions to each set their own sectoral targets and develop transition plans and release guidance on their plan for a managed phaseout of fossil fuels," they added.

The article was amended on 6/11 to add comments from GFANZ received after publication

The post Forests, methane, finance: Where are the Cop26 pledges now? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Glasgow highpoint of our climate leadership has long since faded. So too have the heady days of the 2022 Conservative Party leadership elections, in which most candidates were content at least to hold the line on UK climate ambition, internationally and at home.

Our climate news now, insofar as it exists, is some combination of domestic nimby-ism, diplomatic disinterest, and new drilling.

Personally, I left the Cop26 President’s private office, where I worked as a speechwriter and private secretary, to continue the work from outside government at one of the UK’s largest philanthropic foundations.

Developing nations decry risk of UK breaking climate finance pledge

And it was my new role that took me to Paris last month, for the Macron-Mottley finance summit. More, of course, than can be said for the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who choose instead to party with media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

The President of Kenya William Ruto has a reputation as an emerging voice on the international climate stage. That preceded him as he arrived at the Palais Brongniart in Paris.

So I was listening with interest as he spoke on what he believed to be the great collective failure in our attempts to tackle the climate crisis — our persistent belief that it could be done in a system built on national interest.

To paraphrase him, when global good competes with national interest, national interest wins before the morning’s out. In a somewhat indistinguishable flurry of panels and plenaries, it stuck out as a profound comment on our current state of play.

Governments set to fail to plot shipping industry course for 1.5C

But I think it’s worth all of us, and particularly those trying to make and influence climate policy in the UK, reflecting a little more on Ruto’s point.

At first glance, the current UK context seems to support the argument.

It would be an understatement to say that, in recent years, the going in the UK has got tough. My old thesis advisor, Adam Tooze, repopularised the idea of a global polycrisis.

And this has been felt keenly here in the UK in the interrelated cost of living and energy crises. What money the government has to spend overseas was first reduced in the face of domestic pressures, as the pandemic hit the economy, and has since been sucked towards Ukraine and the defence of democracy on not-so-distant shores.

Identifying loss and damage is tough – we need a pragmatic but science-based approach

Just, it seems, as Ruto warned. National interest winning before the morning is out.

A similar picture can be sketched across much of the Global North.

But I do not believe the UK’s stuttering leadership can truly be explained by Ruto’s global good versus national interest battle. The problem, instead, is a flawed and myopic understanding of one side of the equation.

We have to recognise that global climate leadership, backed by ambitious climate policy at home, is now fundamental to swathes of any governments agenda, whether in terms of geopolitical and diplomatic interests, security – economic and otherwise – or economics. The lines that could once be drawn between international policy and the domestic agenda, as far as I can see, no longer exist.

Threat of EU carbon tax prompts dubious “green aluminium” claims in Mozambique

In recognising this, it quickly follows that leadership on the global good of climate action is not in competition with national interest, it is central to it.

I saw this first-hand back when working for the Cop26 President, as we worked to drive forward the gains of the Glasgow Climate Pact and to build a coalition for ambitious and long-term climate action around the world.

I think back to one of the first working trips I joined having just started in the office. We spent three days in Turkiye, first spending a day a few hours’ drive from Ankara, visiting one of the world’s largest solar farms, before returning to the political capital to work with ministers and the First Lady, in support of their climate agenda.

Morocco’s centuries-old irrigation system under threat from climate change

From a position of serious climate credibility and a solid offer of support, relationships were deepened and connections were created.

There was a palpable level of trust running through each of the Cop President’s interactions. That not only moved our collective climate agenda forward, but also unlocked opportunities for UK renewable energy suppliers and manufacturers.

It also strengthened our Embassy’s position from which to engage across the whole suite of the UK-Turkiye agenda, including the tackling of cross-border crime. It was a trip in which global goods and national interests, on both sides, fit neatly hand in hand.

A few months later we were in Viet Nam, as the Cop26 President lent his support to the team of officials working to complete the final stages of negotiation on Viet Nam’s just energy transition partnership (JETP) – the deal whereby developed countries helped to finance the clean energy transition.

Our meeting with the Vietnamese Prime Minister, which was over an hour long and punctuated by three separate and warm embraces between the two politicians, similarly demonstrated the interaction of global climate cooperation and interests elsewhere.

Senegal shows African countries are not passive beneficiaries of climate finance

Of course each of the conversations on the JETP were ostensibly about coal and the energy transition. But they were equally, if oftentimes implicitly, laying the foundations for deep and continued cooperation on finance, manufacturing and the global value chain, and technical and policy exchange. It would perhaps be stating the obvious to underscore the importance of the UK and its friends on the JETP partner group – particularly the EU and G7 – having a strong and constructive presence in that particular region.

And then there were the multilateral fora. From the G20 to the United Nations General Assembly, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Annual Meetings to Cop27. At so many of the critical junctures and decision-points in each of these moments, I observed that it was the UK and the Cop26 President to which friends and allies turned.

Take, for example, the final hours of Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh. As old North-South acrimony deepened and debates intensified on 1.5C, fossil fuels, and loss and damage, the possibility of a full-scale Cop collapse grew increasingly real.

As the major players of global geopolitics came together against the dramatic backdrop of the UN Blue Zone’s bank of ticking clocks to hash out an acceptable compromise, it was once again the COP26 President playing the role of fair and trusted broker.

UK off course for net zero, its advisers say

That work was good for the global climate agenda, and it certainly did no harm to the UK’s standing on the international stage. These are the sort of moments – moments of fair brokering, competence and friendship – that are remembered in the world of international politics and diplomacy.

And as former environment minister Lord Zac Goldsmith pointed out in his explosive resignation letter on Friday, it is certainly in our national interest to have as many friends as possible as we look to navigate the fraught geopolitics that confronts us, not least in the one-country-one-vote system at the General Assembly.

So, Ruto was perhaps right that, in the current constitution of both concepts, global goods like climate action can’t compete against national interest. But he was not actually sketching an unsolvable problem. He was in fact shining a light on the extent to which our national interest has become far too narrow and inwardly-defined. Correcting that is where we must focus our efforts.

Norway approves oil and gas fields despite Cop fossil phase-out push

The UK’s political leaders, at the end of this parliament and the beginning of the next, must make the conscious move to lead once again. As a first step, that means taking the bold domestic decisions needed to protect and restore the UK’s credibility overseas.

And it means committing the necessary resources internationally, not least to honour the once-flagship but now at-risk climate finance pledge, at a minimum by committing to make up any shortfall over the next parliament.

If we can do the above swiftly, we might just be forgiven for our momentary post-Cop26 blip.

One no longer needs to be a scientist to know there is literally not a minute to waste.

Alex Urwin currently works in climate philanthropy. He was previously a staffer and speechwriter to the Cop26 President Alok Sharma and a researcher in the office of the UK prime minister.

The post The UK’s retreat from climate leadership is not in its national interest appeared first on Climate Home News.

Under the agreement from Cop26, countries are asked to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 climate plans by the end of 2022 to align with the Paris temperature goals, “taking into account different national circumstances”.

The onus is on climate laggards such as Australia, China, India, Brazil and Russia, whose targets are all ranked as “highly” or even “critically insufficient” to meet the Paris Agreement goals by Climate Action Tracker (CAT). CAT analysis suggests that current policies put the world on course for 2.7C heating, an 0.2C improvement compared to last year but far from the 1.5C aspirational target of Paris.

Australia, the biggest laggard among rich nations, has already made it clear that it has no intention of strengthening its 2030 plan, which aims to reduce emissions by 26-28%, compared to 2005 levels. If all other countries followed a similar trajectory, it would set the world on a path for 4C of warming, according to CAT.

In a statement released just one day after the negotiations finished, Scott Morrison’s government said: “Australia’s 2030 target is fixed and we are committed to meeting and beating it, as we did with our Kyoto-era targets.”

During an interview with Australian media, the country’s deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said “we are happy with our 2030 targets… they are fixed.” When asked why his government adopted the pact, he said: “I didn’t sign it, I wasn’t there.”

The breakdown: What is in the Glasgow Climate Pact? 

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s former prime minister and president of the Asia Society, condemned the remarks, saying: “Countries like my own have not simply been granted a leave pass to do nothing for another five years — and they will now need to come back to the table by Cop27 next year.”

The climate minister of New Zealand, which has a “highly insufficient” 2030 climate target of 30% compared to 2005 levels, has also said they have no intention of revisiting it. James Shaw told national media that the pact encouraged countries to revise their targets, “but it doesn’t mean you have to”.

Shaw said: “There are some countries including the larger emitters, that didn’t upgrade their commitments and so that piece of language is really aimed at those countries.”

India is the biggest emitter not to have submitted an updated nationally determined contribution (NDC, in the UN climate jargon) to the Paris Agreement ahead of the Glasgow talks.

Prime minister Narendra Modi announced stronger targets in Glasgow, but has yet to formalise them – and national media later quoted an official saying the increased ambition was contingent on rich countries suppling $1 trillion of finance.

Cop26: After tense huddles in Glasgow, countries strike ‘uncomfortable’ climate deal

Others like China, Russia  and Brazil went through the motions of updating their NDCs but with no strengthening of headline targets.

“Only 25% of the emissions gap [to 1.5C] has been closed by the enhanced NDCs,” Deborah Ramalope from Climate Analytics told Climate Home News. “Most major emitters have the capabilities to aim higher,” she said, adding that new finance would help unlock ambition from countries such as India and Indonesia. 

One emerging economy that significantly increased its ambition before Cop26 was South Africa, boosted by an $8.5 billion package of support to reduce its reliance on coal.

“What we will need to see next year to enable any of the big emerging economies to come forward with more ambitious targets is more confidence that the finance they are going to need to implement those shifts will be available,”  Alex Scott, E3G’s climate diplomacy programme leader, told Climate Home News.

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The UK presidency has a key role to play over the next year to make it politically feasible for countries to increase their targets, said Scott.

Ahead of Cop27 in Egypt next year, the presidency should create “spaces for conversation” not just on emission reduction but also on developing country priorities like finance for climate-induced losses, added Scott, “so that when countries come together in Egypt they are able to have a serious dialogue on what finance looks like, rather than it ending up being a talking shop.”

A spokesperson for the Cop26 presidency did not respond to Climate Home’s questions.

Cop26 president Alok Sharma told reporters: “This is an international agreement. All countries have signed up to this. Every country will be judged by whether or not they stick to the commitments they made.”

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They say there is a serious risk of misinformation derailing the Cop26 presidency’s efforts to keep 1.5C hopes alive and global efforts to reduce emissions.

In an open letter, they urge the Cop26 presidency to adopt a universal definition of climate misinformation and include action to address this in the text published at the end of the summit. That definition would cover deceptive or misleading online content, which either denies human influence on climate change or publicises greenwashing.

“The threat to Cop26 and climate action is not abstract, we have seen misinformation derail conferences before,” the letter states. In 2018, a far-right misinformation campaign pressured European parties to drop support for a UN global compact on migration.

“The compact was actively derailed by coordinated attacks via social media platforms,” Harriet Kingaby, co-founder of the Conscious Advertising Network who launched the campaign, told Climate Home News. “The [false] message being spread was that it was a legally binding contract, that anyone criticising migration at all was going to be jailed.”

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The letter has more than 250 signatories, including Cop sponsors Sky and SSE, Tubiana and Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, president of Cop20 in Lima and WWF’s global climate lead. It urges social media giants to introduce climate misinformation policies and enforcement, similar to those published in response to the widespread problem of misleading posts about Covid-19 vaccines.

“The impact of climate misinformation is not merely neatly contained within the edges of a social media post: it distracts from real climate solutions, and wastes time presenting false ones,” Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, told Climate Home News.

“Misinformation threatens progress on climate by undermining public trust and support for the urgent action needed to limit global warming to 1.5C. We cannot let it take the wind out of the sails of the climate movement,” Pulgar-Vidal said by email. “Cop26 must commit governments to taking real action to tackle deceptive and misleading climate claims.”

The issue was not on a list of potential elements of a Glasgow agreement published on Sunday. To be added, it would need the backing of a national delegation. A first draft of the summit outcome was due to be published on Tuesday night.

Comment: To keep 1.5C alive, the super rich must change their high carbon lifestyles

Recent examples of climate misinformation include US rightwing pundits blaming power outages in Texas on frozen wind turbines, when in fact gas plants were a bigger problem, and trolls falsely claiming on Facebook that arson by environmental campaigners was to blame for the Australian bushfires.

Misinformation on Facebook is “rampant” and “increasing quite substantially”, according to a report published last week by the Real Facebook Oversight Board, an independent watchdog and the environmental NGO Stop Funding the Heat.

Analysis of 48,700 Facebook posts found between 818,000 and 1.36 million daily views of climate misinformation. Just 3.6% of the misleading content identified had been fact-checked. Facebook pledged to flag climate denial content earlier this year and pass it onto its Climate Science Information Centre.

Analysis by Newsguard and Comscore published this summer found that each year an average of $2.6 billion is being spent by big brands advertising on misinformation sites.

Canada, US, Italy among 20 countries to stop financing fossil fuels internationally

During a speech to the climate summit on Monday, former US president Barack Obama referenced the threat climate misinformation poses to global negotiations. 

“International cooperation has always been difficult. It’s made more difficult by all the misinformation and propaganda that can flood out through social media these days. Business leaders, let’s face it, are typically rewarded for boosting short term profits, not addressing major social issues,” he told world leaders.

Kingaby said that the US has an important role to play in tackling misinformation as many major social media companies are based there. “If they are as committed to climate action as they say they are, this is a hugely important step towards fixing the problem,” she said.

The US delegation declined to comment.

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At Cop26 on Monday, Scotland’s leader Nicola Sturgeon said her government would partner with the Climate Justice Resilience Fund to “address loss and damage” caused by climate change. This was backed by £1m ($1.4m) investment in helping the world’s most vulnerable communities repair and rebuild after climate disasters like floods and wildfires.

Under the Paris Agreement, all countries agreed to address the “loss and damage associated with climate change impacts”. But rich countries have fiercely resisted providing specific finance for this as they do not want to accept liability and risk being sued by climate vulnerable nations.

Sonam Wangdi, of Bhutan, who chairs a group of 46 least developed countries (LDCs), told Climate Home News the group was “very happy” about the announcement from the Scottish government.

“I believe that this seed money that the Scottish Government is making [available] is in the right direction. I think it paves the way for the LDCs. It should be very clear that they should be separate funds for loss and damage” on top of existing climate aid.

“When the limits of adaptation have been reached, there is nothing we can do and our people suffer,” he said.

Donor nations commit $1.7bn to help indigenous people protect forests

Climate Action Network International senior adviser Harjeet Singh said: “[The Scottish government] have broken the taboo and they have shown the leadership that other rich countries should have shown long ago.”

“Countries doing that bilaterally would send a very strong signal that would basically legitimise the need for loss and damage finance,” said Zoha Shawoo, an associate scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

“@ScotGov’s commitment to #lossanddamage sends a message to other developed countries to step up. Those most vulnerable and least responsible for the #climatecrisis are bearing the brunt of these damages. This is the fundamental injustice.” @TasneemEssop @CANIntl #COP26 pic.twitter.com/OVX8KJJSxe

— Climate Justice Resilience Fund (@CJRFund) November 3, 2021

But the sum of money offered will not go far on its own – and efforts to institutionalise support through the UN climate negotiations are making painfully slow progress.

Campaigners have estimated vulnerable nations need at least $300bn to respond to loss and damage in 2030.

Alpha Kaloga, a lead climate negotiator from Guinea, described the Scottish pledge as “greatly symbolic”.

To get to the necessary scale, there needs to be agreement at Cop26 to put money behind the “Santiago Network”, the home of loss and damage action under UN Climate Change, Kaloga said. “What matters is the political will and the political ambition. Now the question is who’s next and how much more?”

The Santiago Network was conceived at the last UN climate talks to work on how to minimise, avoid and recover from loss and damage. Now negotiators are discussing how to put it into action.

Shawoo said that while developing countries want this organisation to have an appropriate budget, staff and a broad remit to provide technical assistance and address climate impacts, richer nations want to limit it to an online platform for exchanging information.

Donor nations commit $1.7bn to help indigenous people protect forests

If the collaborative route does not yield results, some vulnerable countries are exploring how to force rich countries to pay up through the courts.

Led by Antigua and Barbuda and Tuvalu, a coalition of small island developing states has launched a commission to examine avenues for litigation.

At Cop26, Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister Gaston Browne said loss and damage was important to small island states and was not going to be seriously addressed in the conference’s negotiations.

“We are pursuing this issue legally on the basis that he who damages must pay restitution. In other words, the polluter must pay,” he said.

He added that the initiative “is not intended to be an act of aggression” but that in order to get climate justice, small islands must fight on different complementary fronts.

Shawoo said that, when developing countries suffer climate impacts they could sue big historic polluters for compensation. Rich countries who have not met their climate pledges would be particularly vulnerable to these lawsuits, she said. On the other hand, lawsuits may be slow and burdensome for developing countries.

Meanwhile, since Scotland is not a member of the UN, its commitment to the vulnerable nations should encourage other non-state actors to follow suit, said Kaloga.

“The big billionaires of the world can by the same way set a precedent by providing resources to the world’s most vulnerable people,” he said.

The post Scotland breaks loss and damage “taboo”, raising hopes others will follow appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is one of a handful of funding initiatives for forest protection announced at Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow. Twelve donor countries pledged a total of $12 billion in public funds, with private co-financing worth $7.2bn.

The funding supports a pact signed by more than 100 countries to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

The UK, Norway, Germany, US, and the Netherlands, along with 17 private and philanthropic organisations earmarked a $1.7bn pot for indigenous and local communities to help them preserve forests. This came with a promise to include them in the decision-making and design of climate programmes and finance instruments.

In a statement, the group committed to “recognise and advance  the role of Indigenous peoples and local communities as guardians of forests and nature” in the face of “rising cases of threats, harassment and violence against [them]”.

That approach confronts attempts to roll back indigenous land rights in countries like Brazil, where president Jair Bolsonaro has instead sought to open the Amazon rainforest to business interests.

Forest experts have cautiously welcomed the move, while saying how the money is disbursed will be critical.

“It’s a good step forward that the role indigenous peoples and local community play is protecting nature and forests is recognised,” Josefina Brana-Varela, vice president and deputy lead on forests at WWF, told Climate Home News.

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But indigenous people are wary of hailing another promise to protect the world’s tropical forests and deforestation – a pledge that many countries already made in 2014 and then did little to enact.

Dinamam Tuxá, of the Brazilian state of Bahia and the executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil network (Abip), told Climate Home: “Every Cop global leaders make huge announcements committing themselves to do something about climate change. But they never live up to their promises.”

Dinamam Tuxá is the executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil network (Abip)

In recent years, a ballooning body of studies has shown that indigenous territories have lower or similar levels of deforestation to other protected areas. While indigenous communities manage half of the world’s land, a recent study found that they receive less than 1% of the climate funding earmarked to reduce deforestation.

Tuxá said that needed to change. “What we need is direct funding for the people who are actually doing the work of preventing deforestation. In Brazil, the funds that are designed for indigenous peoples are not making it to the communities,” he said.

The initiative is an attempt to plug some of that gap.

The money could be used to strength indigenous brigades that tackle forest fires and to use new technologies for monitoring and accounting for forests’ carbon stocks and biodiversity levels, for example.

Over 100 countries join methane pledge but China, India, Australia and Russia stay out

Kevin Currey, programme officer at the Ford Foundation which is part of the initiative, told Climate Home that each donor will decide how to allocate their contributions by engaging with indigenous peoples. Funders will be expected to report to the UK government every year on how and how much has been disbursed.

Not all funds will reach communities directly. Logistical and political barriers mean that NGOs and funds such as the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility will also play an intermediary role, Currey explained.

“The money is on the table, and we will continue to work with indigenous peoples and local communities to make sure it is spent effectively, in ways that make a tangible difference on the ground,” he said.

Brana-Varela, of WWF, said that to be effective on the ground, the process for communities to access the funds must be simplified. “Most of these rules are extremely complicated, very technical, and there’s very little capacity or support for communities to meet the requirements,” she said.

While there has been progress in designing initiatives to halt deforestation in recent years, Brana-Varela said there were no guarantees of avoiding a repeat of previous broken promises.

I welcome the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests & Land Use as an important step to halt & reverse deforestation.

Signing the declaration is the easy part.

It is essential that it is implemented now for people & planet. #COP26

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) November 2, 2021

That is particularly true in Brazil, where president Bolsonaro has been pushing through a series of laws to roll back indigenous rights and environmental protection, while legitimising land grabbers.

Between August 2020 and July 2021, deforestation in Brazil hit its highest annual level in a decade.

Yet Bolsonaro signed the Glasgow forest declaration, under which he committed to halt deforestation this decade and to strengthen efforts to “recognise the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as local communities, in accordance with relevant national legislation and international instruments, as appropriate”.

In a speech on Monday, environment minister Joaquim Pereira Leite announced Brazil would bring forward its commitment to end deforestation by two years to 2028 as part of an updated 2030 climate plan. But the pledge only makes up for a regression in ambition by Bolsonaro in 2020.

For Tuxá, Brazil’s promises have been made “in bad faith, without a doubt”. “They do not intend to live up to a single term of that agreement,” especially those related to indigenous peoples’ rights, he said.

Ana Toni, executive director of Brazilian institute Clima e Sociedade, told Climate Home the Bolsonaro government would be unable to block the support from reaching communities at a time when it is seeking additional financial commitment from the US to protect the Amazon forest.

“They are on their knees and are having to make these kinds of announcements,” she said. “That does not mean they have changed their position, but they have changed their narrative because they have lost the argument.”

The Brazilian government did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.

The post Donor nations commit $1.7bn to help indigenous people protect forests appeared first on Climate Home News.

To prevent the spread of Covid-19, access to negotiating rooms has been tightly restricted, leading negotiators and observers to complain that they have travelled across the world just to watch a malfunctioning webcast.

On both Monday and Tuesday, as world leaders spoke on stage, delegates were sent an alert to say the venue was nearing capacity and encourage them to work remotely.

In a statement, Climate Action Network (CAN) said: “People who’ve invested time and resources to travel to Glasgow have waited patiently only to find there is ‘no room at the inn’ for civil society and told to ‘join events online’ – to then find they were offline.”

Adrián Martínez, director of La Ruta del Clima from Costa Rica, said his team had overcome major logistical hurdles to get to Glasgow and advocate for human rights. In the crowded venue, they have had to sit on the floor and been unable to influence or even reliably follow the decision making process.

“This is not an inclusive Cop, completely the opposite,” said Martínez.

It’s beyond a joke – the #COP26 venue has now reached capacity. It’s like trying to get into a late night club – ‘sorry mate, it’s full’ ‘one in, one out’. The UK Govt should reimburse all the 1000s of people who paid ££ to come to Glasgow & sit in hotel rooms. pic.twitter.com/qB34JeKIxJ

— asad rehman (@chilledasad100) November 2, 2021

National representatives get just two seats in each negotiating room, making it harder for the appointed spokesperson to access technical advice during a meeting.

CAN spokesperson Hala Kilani told Climate Home News that CAN and the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, which between them represent hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, share four tickets across all negotiating rooms.

Wait wait.

The biggest negotiating room at #COP26 has space for 144 people.

There are 197 Parties to the UNFCCC.

Who thought that was going to work?

— David Tong (@Davidxvx) November 1, 2021

Cop-goers also complained about the online system. Colin McQuistan, from the aid agency Practical Action, said: “The online system was difficult to access yesterday, many people were unable to log in. Today, things seem slightly better although the internet for virtual participants keeps dropping and hence [we] keep missing sections of the discussions.”

Those that have made it to Cop26 have overcome major obstacles: Covid restrictions, an accommodation shortage, travel disruption caused by a tree falling on the main train line from London and long and unruly queues to get into the venue.

“We are working tirelessly to ensure an inclusive, accessible and safe summit in Glasgow,” a Cop26 spokesperson said. “This includes ensuring the Cop26 venue is fully accessible to all, working with our hotel provider to ensure affordable accommodation, offering voluntary vaccinations for participants and minimising wait times as much as possible.”

On Tuesday evening, the organisers sent an email to participants apologising for the inconveniences of accessing both the physical and virtual spaces.

They cited “exceptional and unprecedented logistical circumstances” coupled with “unprecedented interest” in the conference and noted that the world leaders’ summit required extra security arrangements.

“With your support and understanding we remain confident that we can achieve the best possible outcomes here at Cop26 in Glasgow for people and the planet,” they wrote.

India strengthens climate targets, aiming for net zero by 2070

The UN official participant list shows that several climate vulnerable Pacific islands have not sent delegations to Glasgow including Vanuatu and Kiribati. Others, like Micronesia, have sent much smaller delegations.

Ralph Regenvanu, opposition leader of Vanuatu told the Guardian this was “a big issue for the Pacific, the fact that we will not be able to be there in person as we would like”.

He added: “If we go back to Paris [Cop21], it was the personal presence of Pacific leaders that really made a change and brought us to the 1.5C figure that we have now in the agreement.”

In the months leading up to the summit, the UK government was telling countries on its “red list” that their delegations would have to quarantine for five days on arrival in the UK.

The cost of this was estimated at around £2,285 ($3,164). The UK government eventually agreed to cover this cost. It later reduced and then abolished the red list – but the uncertainty dissuaded many from attending.

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Three weeks before the summit, the “red list” was scaled back to seven Latin American and Caribbean countries. One of those was Peru, where Practical Action’s global communications officer Silvia María Gonzales travelled from.

She told Climate Home News that, on arrival in Birmingham airport after a long journey from Lima via Amsterdam, UK border guards were reluctant to accept that she was allowed to come to the UK from a red list country despite her having permission to do so for Cop26.

When she eventually got through security, Gonzales was expecting to be picked up and taken to her quarantine hotel by someone from CTM Travel, a company which the UK government had outsourced the responsibility to.

But, when she got into the empty airport terminal late on Sunday night, there was nobody to pick her and her colleague up. Airport police asked them to leave but they refused and stayed in the terminal until 3am when their British colleagues arranged for them to be picked up and taken to their hotel, a two hour drive away at Gatwick airport near London.

“I was hoping to hit the ground running and not start with that level of exhaustion”, Gonzales said.

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The UK host to the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, has repeatedly said it is planning for the UN climate talks to be held in person while continuing to monitor the Covid-19 situation. Prior to the pandemic, the event was expected to involve 30,000 delegates.

“I’m very keen to champion the voices of developing nations. It’s an important reason why we want to make sure that the event in Glasgow is a physical event so they can sit at the same table,” Cop26 president designate Alok Sharma told British lawmakers on Thursday.

For in-person talks to take place, all delegates will need to have been vaccinated and robust and repeated testing will have to be carried out before, during and after the summit, according to Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh and an adviser to the Covid-19 committee of the Scottish Parliament.

“It’s fine for politicians to be bullish about saying it’s going ahead but there is a lot to think about here,” she told Climate Home News, citing challenges to vaccines rollouts in developing nations.

“Without vaccines for delegates, we could end up creating a global superspreader event in Glasgow,” warned Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based NGO Power Shift Africa.

Five ways the UK is failing to walk the talk on a green recovery ahead of Cop26

Less than eight months ahead of Cop26 – the first test for nations to increase their climate ambition under the Paris Agreement – stark inequities in accessing Covid-19 vaccines is testing the international solidarity on which the climate talks are based.

Just like the #ClimateCrisis, COVID19 is a stress test for international solidarity. Both crises can only be defeated if we work together.

I therefore whole-heartedly support the UN SG @antonioguterres‘ call for vaccine equity. As he said: “We’re only safe once everyone is safe”

— Patricia Espinosa C. (@PEspinosaC) March 6, 2021

In private, three climate diplomats from developing nations told Climate Home News they expected vaccinations to be necessary if the talks were to be held in-person, not only to protect Cop26 participants but also their families, friends and colleagues when they travel home.

“Vaccines diplomacy is in a way a reflection of the reality of the negotiations. Countries defend their own interests first and the idea of global action to face a global challenge is tested clearly in the way vaccines are provided to developing countries,” said one developing country diplomat.

While the UK Cop26 host is far ahead in delivering vaccines to its population, dozens of countries are still waiting for their first shipment to arrive.

Last month, the UN described the pace of progress as “wildly uneven and unfair” when just 10 countries had administered 75% of all Covid-19 vaccines while 130 nations hadn’t received a single dose.

LDCs need vaccines and support. There could not be a better time for empathy and solidarity.

— LDC Chair (@LDCChairUNFCCC) January 18, 2021

Holding in-person talks means “you would have to vaccinate every negotiator,” another developing country diplomat told Climate Home News.

“How do you do that when [many] developing countries haven’t started to vaccinate their most vulnerable people? How is it going to look when the only people vaccinated in half the countries in the world are UN negotiators?”

Tasneem Essop, executive director at the Climate Action Network International, said Cop26 delegates should not be given priority to vaccines.

“That is not equitable, that is queue-jumping. How do we justify delegates coming to Cop being vaccinated before health and frontline workers?” she told Climate Home News. “We need to see a global effort to ensure equitable access to all countries. This is not what we are seeing.”

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As Cop26 host, UK government should “play a championing, and visible role in ensuring much stronger solidarity in the roll out of the vaccines,” Essop said. For Adow, that should include ensuring all Cop26 delegates and their families receive the vaccine before the summit.

Last month, civil society groups sent a letter, seen by Climate Home News, to the UN Climate Change bureau, a group of top diplomats representing all UN regions who decide on organisational matters related to the talks.

“We believe it lies within the responsibility of a Cop presidency and all bureau members to uphold and honour the principle of equal vaccine distribution,” they wrote.

They suggested countries should redistribute surplus vaccines and support a proposal by India and South Africa to waive patents for Covid-19 vaccines so production could be scaled up.

South Sudan plans to raise climate ambition amid ‘dire’ humanitarian crisis

Professor Bauld said she expected vaccination certificates to be rolled out by the time Cop26 is due to take place in November. Plans for vaccine passports are already being considered by a number of countries, including the EU.

A briefing note prepared by the University of Edinburgh said this certification alone should not determine whether someone can travel or access an event. Negative PCR tests for example could be considered as an alternative.

One African diplomat warned against making vaccination a requirement for delegates to attend Cop26. “If some countries are not in the position to access vaccine then it will be an act of excluding them.”

Neither the UK nor UN Climate Change have directly responded to questions over whether Covid-19 vaccination will be a prerequisite for delegates to attend the conference.

“Working with the UN and others we will have to see how we can mitigate the risk of people not being able to come to Glasgow,” Sharma told UK members of parliament on Thursday.

A Cop26 spokesperson said the summit team was “exploring what different scenarios might mean for Cop26 and how we plan for that, whilst putting the health of the participants and the local community first.”

UN Climate Change said discussions were ongoing “on all levels” but a source with knowledge of discussions at the bureau said they had not heard any discussions about vaccines access in relation to Cop26 preparations.

The post Unequal vaccine rollout threatens inclusivity of Cop26, climate diplomats warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

Last month, the government was criticised by environmental campaigners and lawmakers for not blocking the construction of a new coal mine in Cumbria, northwest England. They said that the coal project weakened the UK’s leadership credentials ahead of hosting the Cop26 climate summit in November. 

The £165 million West Cumbria Mining project is to extract coking coal from below the Irish Sea for steel production, which will emit an estimated 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year when burned.

In response to mounting criticism, the ministry of housing, communities and local government said in a statement that the planning application should be determined by the local council. 

Cumbria county council said this week that it would reconsider permission in light of “new evidence”, citing guidance from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) published in December that recommends that the use of coking coal should be curbed by 2035 if the UK is to meet its 2050 net-zero target. 

West Cumbria Mining said in its application that the mine would be closed by the end of 2049.

Cop26 dream team: The people setting the climate agenda on seven key issues

Last month the CCC wrote a letter to minister of housing and communities Robert Jenrick urging the government to reconsider all new coal developments. 

“The opening of a new deep coking coal mine in Cumbria will increase global emissions and have an appreciable impact on the UK’s legally binding carbon budgets,” Lord Deben, head of the CCC, wrote. 

“It is also important to note that this decision gives a negative impression of the UK’s climate priorities in the year of COP26,” he added. 

In the letter, the CCC offered to help frame guidance for local councillors and planners who are involved in making decisions with climate implications.

The Cumbria Council decision to backtrack on a new coal mine has nothing to do with ‘new information’ and everything to do with the power of people getting organised

— Ellen Gibson (@ellenrgibson) February 9, 2021

Rebecca Willis, professor in practice at Lancaster University, told Climate Home News the review did not necessarily mean the council would cancel the project.

Councillors had seen “plenty of independent expert evidence” on the climate impacts before approving the mine, she said. But the CCC advice was harder to ignore and doing so could lay them open to legal challenge.

The local authority is under “huge political pressure” and “trying to look for a face-saving way out,” she said. 

“It’s a really bad look for a government who claims to be a climate leader and who is hosting the most important climate summit ever to be telling other governments what to do and then supporting a coal mine in its own backyard. At best that’s confusing and at worst it’s hypocritical.”

In a letter sent to Jenrick in October, 13 independent climate experts argued that a 2049 end date was “wholly inappropriate” and would “hinder the ability of UK industry, particularly the steel industry, to innovate and decarbonise.”

Fatal Himalayan glacial lake outburst highlights destabilising effect of warming

Unbelievably excellent news!! The power of climate change political commitments to actually prevent new high carbon major infrastructure projects from going ahead may at last be reaching the levels needed (ref Heathrow).

Next up, the £27bn road building programme https://t.co/U5DUpHq4CA

— Leo Murray @crisortunity@urbanists.social (@crisortunity) February 9, 2021

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg questioned the UK’s net zero commitment after the government refused to intervene last month.

“This really shows the true meaning of so called ‘net zero 2050.’ These vague, insufficient targets long into the future basically mean nothing today,” she said. 

Jill Perry, chair of a local green party in Cumbria, welcomed the council’s decision to review the application. 

“If the mine goes ahead it risks not just blowing the government’s sixth carbon budget out of the water but also Cumbria’s net zero goal,” she told Climate Home News, adding that besides increasing emissions, the mine posed a serious risk to local woodland and wildlife.

Indian farmers head for showdown with government over agricultural reform

West Cumbria Mining has said that the mine will create 500 jobs in a region struggling with high unemployment. 

“There’s no doubt that the area needs jobs, but jobs in clean industries would provide a much more certain future for the area,” said Perry.

Labour lawmaker and former energy minister Ed Miliband also welcomed the council’s announcement this week. 

“The government now has a second chance to do the right thing and call it in. The UK cannot claim to be a climate leader whilst opening a new coal mine and ministers must realise that by doing so they undermine our credibility both at home and abroad,” he said in a statement. 

The post Plans for UK coal mine suspended after criticism of net zero commitment appeared first on Climate Home News.

Frustrated by a lost year for climate negotiations, with Cop26 postponed to November 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, youth campaigners have organised their own two-week virtual conference.

Delegates from 118 countries are taking part, with the majority of applications coming from the developing world, including nations hit hard by climate change impacts. After hearing from climate scientists and policymakers, and learning negotiation skills, they will vote on a statement to present to world leaders.

Mobilising support for communities like those suffering from record-breaking tropical storm seasons in the Philippines, Vietnam and Nicaragua is a priority – from the industrialised countries most responsible for global heating.

Loss and damage finance is an issue which rich countries have dragged their feet on for many years. In 2013 the Warsaw international mechanism was set up to address loss and damage, but little funding has been made available to help people in developing countries recover from climate disasters such as flooding, typhoons and drought.

In 2015 countries agreed that “loss and damage” references in the Paris Agreement did not provide a basis for liability or compensation. At last year’s Cop25 in Madrid, the US sought to block other potential avenues for climate compensation.

UK aid budget cuts undermine trust ahead of Cop26 summit, experts warn

Ahead of the mock Cop, youth activists set up a loss and damage coalition, calling on the UK Cop26 presidency to make the issue a permanent agenda item in climate negotiations and offer more financial support to developing nations.

“Developed countries, who fuelled the climate crisis through decades of wilful negligence and inaction, have done very little to help the billions of people in developing countries who suffer the effects of loss and damage,” activists wrote in an open letter. 

“We are demanding that developed country leaders establish a new window of finance that is specifically dedicated to loss and damage,” Sadie DeCoste, Canadian youth activist and one of the coalition founders, told Climate Home News. A tax on fossil fuel extraction or a frequent flyers’ levy could help raise funds, she suggested. 

Climate negotiators have reacted in a “very dismissive” way to youth calling for support for communities most affected by loss and damage, DeCoste said. “They did not take our views seriously. We are creating a space for youth voices to be meaningfully included in decision-making.” 

Several members of the loss and damage coalition who attended mock cop spoke to Climate Home about their experience and the change they are fighting for. 

Malaysian climate activist Azierah Ansar

Malaysian activist Azierah Ansar said she is using the youth summit as an opportunity to compile stories and studies highlighting “how devastating loss and damage can be”. 

“In Malaysia, we have seen about 20 floods this year. With floods people lose property and crop yields and diseases spread,” Ansar said. 

“If farmers lose their crop yields for a year because the flood barriers have not been strengthened enough, the government should pay them remedies,” she added.

The youth summit has taught her how to negotiate and find common ground, and how to effectively communicate the urgency of the climate crisis, she said.

Elhadj Abdoul Diallo from Guinea

22-year-old Elhadj Abdoul Diallo from Guinea said climate impacts are already devastating parts of his country. “In Guinea, temperatures are rising, the desert is advancing and people are moving from their local communities to towns because of lack of food,” he said, adding that climate refugees from Mali and Senegal are fleeing to Guinea.

“There is no support for loss and damage victims. The government says they cannot afford to give them shelter,” he said.

“We expect world leaders to put pressure on global north countries to put aside alternative sources to help the global south with loss and damage costs.”

The post Youth activists demand damages for climate victims at virtual ‘mock Cop26’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

UK organisers of the summit announced the selection on Monday, focusing on the trio’s plans for an “underwater super-highway” in the North Sea to deliver offshore wind power to the grid.

However critics were quick to note that SSE is investing in the 840MW gas-fired Keadby 2 power plant, one of the few gas projects under development in the UK. The UK has a legally binding target to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.

Scottish Green Party parliamentary candidate Guy Ingerson tweeted that “SSE as a sponsor of COP26 suggests we will [be] having a COP27, COP28, COP29…this summit needs to be more than a greenwashing exercise”.

In a statement announcing the sponsorship, SSE said it is investing £7.5bn in “low-carbon infrastructure” for the UK and Ireland including building the world’s largest offshore wind farm in the North Sea.

“Flexible thermal, such as that being built at Keadby 2, has a role to play in the transition to net zero under any pathway and will displace other less efficient generation and support security of supply,” a spokesperson for SSE said.

EIB approves €1 trillion green investment plan to become ‘climate bank’

Fossil gas is less polluting than coal but burning it still releases CO2 and there is increasing evidence of the damage methane leaks from gas extraction do to the climate. The EU is changing its rules so that gas power plants are no longer classified as a “sustainable” or “transition” investment.

Scottish Power is a Glasgow-based company which decided in 2018 to remove all coal and gas operations from its portfolio and concentrate solely on renewables. It says it will invest £10 billion ($13bn) in clean energy generation in the next five years. National Grid owns and operates the electricity transmission system in England and Wales and in parts of northeastern USA.

British bank Natwest is the first named finance sector sponsor for Cop26. In February 2020, the bank banned financing of oil and gas exploration.

Cop26 president-designate Alok Sharma said: “I am delighted to announce our first sponsors for Cop26, who have all shown ambitious climate leadership through setting net zero commitments and science based targets.” The Cop26 organisers have said that all sponsors should have a credible plan to reach ‘net zero’ by 2050.

The press release did not disclose the value of the sponsorship packages.

Previous Cops have been sponsored by energy companies including Endesa, Polish coking coal company JSW and EDF, which operates several coal-fired power plants.

SSE, Scottish Power and National Grid have announced they will invest more than £3bn ($4bn) laying underwater cables to transport offshore wind energy between Peterhead and Torness in the east of Scotland, the offshore wind farms in the North Sea and Selby and Hawthorn Point in the north-east of England.

Greenpeace UK campaigner Mel Evans said it was “encouraging that the first Cop26 sponsors are companies that are heavily invested in the renewables transition” and did not include oil and gas companies.

“The government has controversially held regular meetings with fossil fuel companies regarding Cop26. They should now be explicitly ruled out as sponsors, to avoid any risk of them greenwashing these vital global climate negotiations.”

The post First named Cop26 sponsors are big investors in offshore wind – and a gas plant appeared first on Climate Home News.

Measures to contain the spread of coronavirus, also known as Covid19, are ramping up globally, with tougher travel restrictions forcing meetings to be postponed later into the year and squeezing timetables for decisions.

An intergovernmental conference aiming to establish a global ocean treaty to protect marine biodiversity in the high seas, beyond areas of national jurisdiction, is the latest of a series of global meetings to be affected by the virus.

A draft decision to postpone the meeting is expected to be considered by the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

The fourth and final round of government negotiations on marine biodiversity had been due to take place at the UN headquarters in New York from 23 March to 3 April.

On Friday, UN Climate Change said it would not hold any physical meetings in its headquarters in Bonn, Germany, or elsewhere in the world from 6 March to the end of April.

Legal gaps and US election could delay climate ambition before Glasgow summit

12 meetings planned between now and the end of April could be affected by the decision, according to UN Climate Change’s calendar. This includes the Adaptation Fund board meeting which has now been postponed.

UN Climate Change secretariat said it was working to find alternative arrangements, including virtual meetings, in coming months.

In a statement, executive secretary of UN Climate Change Patricia Espinosa said the decision to suspend meetings until the end of April acknowledged “the increasing challenges posed by travel restrictions and quarantine measures that some countries have imposed on travellers from Germany”.

Over the past few days, some meetings were unable to make progress because of delegates absence, she said, adding: “Some forthcoming meetings require quorum which can be affected by last-minute cancellations or non-attendance by members or alternates.”

The delays are putting increasing pressure on an already tight timetable ahead of a major biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, in October and UN climate talks in Glasgow, UK, known as Cop26, in November.

In Kunming, countries are due to agree on a new global framework to protect biodiversity over the next decade. In Glasgow, countries are under pressure to enhance their climate plans for the next 10 years and finalise rules for a global carbon market.

Power structures over gender make women more vulnerable to climate change

And the impact is being felt across the UN.

Last month, a preparatory meeting for the biodiversity summit in Kunming, had to be relocated from China to Rome, Italy.

For shipping, the International Maritime Organisation has already postponed two meetings due to take place this month. A key meeting of the IMO’s environmental protection committee held in London from 30 March to 3 April could also be affected.

The committee is expected to review proposals to improve the energy efficiency of ships. A decision on whether to uphold the meeting could be taken later this week, an IMO spokesperson told Climate Home News.

Africa Climate Week, which was due to take place in Kampala on 20-24 April, was also postponed. Uganda is still due to host the meeting but at a later, unconfirmed, date.

Elsewhere, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) board meeting is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, this week, instead of at its headquarters in Songdo, in South Korea. Attendance to the meeting, where board members are due to approve a new strategic plan for the next four years, has been restricted.

Liane Schalatek, an observer to the GCF meeting from the environmental think-tank Heinrich Böll Foundation who is unable to attend the meeting, told CHN this will be “an interesting test case” for whether transparency and remote participation can work at scale via webcasting.

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The scale of the impacts of Covid-19 on the global timetable for action on biodiversity and climate change is not yet known.

Speaking at the UN on Friday, Cop26 president Alok Sharma said the UK, alongside Italy which is hosting the pre-Cop, will be “creating a drumbeat of action in the calendar of international events leading up to Cop26”. The whole of Italy has since been put on lockdown because of the virus.

In private, climate diplomats told CHN the impact could be much greater if Covid-19 were to affect climate talks in Bonn in June, when countries are due to lay the ground work ahead of Cop26.

A spokesperson for the Cop26 presidency team said the summit was still many months away but it was “monitoring the situation closely”.

“Our officials are attending planned engagements but we are aware that this is an issue which may affect some international travel. We will adapt our plans accordingly to ensure necessary discussions and diplomacy with international partners can continue,” she said.

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Meanwhile, it is still unclear whether a key EU-China meeting at the end of the month in Shanghai can go ahead as planned.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council president Charles Michel are due to travel to Beijing to prepare an EU-China summit in Germany in September.

The EU is hoping to engage Beijing in a race to the top to ensure global action to curb emissions remains meaningful ahead of Cop26, even without the US on board.

Last month, EU Commission’s climate chief Frans Timmermans’ planned trip to Beijing was cancelled. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also cancelled his trip to Brussels amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

On Monday, the World Health Organisation reported 1,112 cases in Germany and more than 110,000 confirmed cases across the world. More than 3,800 people have died of the virus so far.

The post Coronavirus delays global efforts for climate and biodiversity action appeared first on Climate Home News.

Together the three countries account for about 0.1% of world emissions.

Details of updated climate action plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs):

• Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands, which says its 53,000 citizens account for a fractional 0.00001 percent of global emissions, says it will work to curb the Pacific islands’ vulnerability to storms and sea level rise while developing solar power to break dependence on diesel fuel.

Lacking land for solar power, it said it may place floating panels on lagoons and install panels in novel places such as on schools, basketball courts, hospitals, and at airports.

It was the first to submit a new NDC, in 2018, when it set a new goal of cutting emissions by 58% by 2035 and reaffirmed an aspiration for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

• Suriname

Suriname says it will step up climate action especially in electricity, road transport, agriculture and forests – sectors that account for 70% of the country’s emissions. Overall, it says that it is already a “carbon-negative country” because its tropical forests soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.

Among measures, the NDC will expand protected areas for forests and wetlands to cover 17% of the South American country by 2030, up from 14%.

The NDC stops short of setting economy-wide targets for emissions but outlines “a cost-effective pathway to decarbonisation of sustainable economic development, maintaining the integrity of natural forest acting as a carbon sink, and strengthening resilience.”

• Norway

Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer plans to cut emissions by 50-55% by 2030 below 1990 levels, in line with a European Green Deal outlined by the European Commission. Norway is not an EU member, but usually matches EU goals, which are currently for a cut of at least 40% by 2030.

It became the first developed nation to submit a new NDC, on 7 February, saying “the deadline is February 9.”

Norway’s emissions were 1.1% above 1990 levels in 2018 and Norway has failed to meet previous targets with domestic action. In 2010, for instance, the government pledged to cut emissions by 30-40% by 2020. It will only meet the goal by buying emissions quotas abroad.

• Other nations

Separately, a total of 107 governments representing 15% of emissions have promised to enhance NDC ambition sometime this year, according to the World Resources Institute think-tank.

There are 197 parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement. NDCs are the building blocks of global action, typically outlining policy goals for the next decade.

Documents implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement say countries are meant to bolster their NDCs every five years and submit the plans at least nine months before the relevant UN conferences, or Cop. This year’s Cop26 will be in Glasgow from 9-19 November, making 9 February a theoretical date for submissions.

But documents dating back to 2011 say the Paris Agreement was originally due to enter into force only in 2020, meaning that formal reviews will only start in 2025, 2030, 2035 and so on, legal scholars say. Governments may be able merely to re-submit existing plans in 2020.

But many governments, climate activists, the UN, cities and companies want urgent upgrades this year to tackle the worsening impacts of warming.

The post Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway upgrade climate plans before Cop26 appeared first on Climate Home News.

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.

“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.

The post UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020 appeared first on Climate Home News.

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.

The post UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit appeared first on Climate Home News.