Teresa Ribera: There is greater openness from the US and Brazil to reach agreements at COP26

The third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, told EFE on Friday that she has been able to verify a change of attitude and greater openness in countries so far reluctant to commit, such as the US and Brazil, to the agreements that must be reached in November at the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow.

“A constructive attitude has been very visible on the part of countries that in recent years were being more complicated, a change of attitude in the US and a greater opening in Brazil,” said the minister about the preparatory work for the Glasglow summit that takes place at the Pre-COP26 these days in Milan (northern Italy).

In his opinion, the talks “are going well”, because delegations from 40 countries have met in Milan, “a significant sample, but we are not all, the 189 countries that are part of the convention”.

Pre-COP26

The minister considered that the Pre-COP26 “is serving to recover a lot of lost time” and highlighted the “novel format presented by Italy, with a summit of young people the days before and with which the ministers have dialogued” to express that “they miss greater agility in the decarbonization processes.”

On the issues addressed, he said that there has been “a very broad consensus on some of the most sensitive issues, such as the need to strengthen all mechanisms to promote adaptation, which until relatively recently was considered a secondary element with respect to the emission reduction objective.”

They have also approached positions on an issue “enormously complicated” such as “responding to losses and irreparable damage”, in addition to “an endorsement to maintain the commitment and make viable the Paris objective, to ensure that the increase in temperature remains around 1.5 degrees”.

“This means recognizing that we have to strengthen national contributions, that perhaps we need to make things much more explicit at street level, for example, a timetable for the abandonment of coal, generalize nature-based solutions or seek much more effective and visible measures in the environment of urban mobility emissions,” he explained.

Emission reduction

Regarding Spain, the vice president considered that the objectives for the transition are very ambitious.

“In fact they are equivalent to those of the US and are aligned with the common objective of the EU to collectively reduce emissions by around -55% and Spain, at the moment, with national commitments we have positioned ourselves in a reduction that would be equivalent to our share of -52 of the EU,” he said.

“We have made a very remarkable effort … Another thing is that we have not yet completed it, it remains to work much more on mobility, especially urban and metropolitan, so it is important that the low-emission zones are applied and transform our urban profile, “he added.

Pre-COP26 has brought together ministers and other representatives of energy and environment to discuss key political aspects of the negotiations and delve into some of the key issues that will be addressed at COP26 and will also feature representatives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and civil society actors.

This meeting is preceded by a meeting of ministers that was held in July in London and has been considered “the last formal and multilateral opportunity of the member countries of the UNFCCC to give detailed shape to the negotiations before the summit in Glasgow”, according to the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition.

Source: EFE Green