The blockade of the negotiations threatens the Climate Summit

The Climate Summit in Madrid — which should have ended on Friday — remains mired in negotiations on how to implement the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 and whose plans for cuts are planned for the decade that begins in just 15 days. Two major points are those that generate the stagnation of the discussions of the representatives of the almost 200 countries gathered at this meeting under the umbrella of the UN: how to urge governments to present plans to cut greenhouse gases harder than those they plan to apply now and how future markets for the exchange of carbon dioxide emissions (CO) rights should be articulated.₂). In both points that clogged the end of COP25 – as this international event is called – the legacies of the Kyoto Protocol and the financing promises that developed countries have made for years to the poorest states to help them adapt to the impacts of global warming are very present.

The presidency of this COP25, held by Chile, tries to find intermediate ways to unlock the negotiation, such as leaving the development of the most technical and conflictive part of the carbon markets for later, as Andrés Landerretche, coordinator of the Presidency of the summit, explained on Friday.

However, after a night of negotiations, this Saturday morning the cop25 presidency has presented new drafts, which still do not generate consensus. On one side are the European Union and many countries, including several Latin American countries, such as Colombia, which are committed to calling for greater ambition against climate change and urging all states to revise upwards their plans to fight warming in 2020. On the other side, china, India and some African countries and other pre-sponsors have been placed, preferring that the final declaration should focus more on what has not been done in terms of adaptation; basically, they reproach developed countries for not contributing enough to developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. With positions so far apart, also on the technical issue of carbon markets, it is foreseeable that the negotiation will continue during the day.

The drafts released on Saturday morning have also not pleased the NGOs that closely follow the negotiations. “It’s completely unacceptable,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of Greenpeace International. “I have never seen such a big disconnect between science and what citizens in the streets and the negotiators of a summit are asking for,” said Alden Meyer, a member of the NGO Union of Concerned Scientists. “Governments have screwed it up,” added Mohamed Adow of the Climate Action Network.

The Paris Agreement, which will replace Kyoto, obliges its signatories to try to keep warming within non-catastrophic limits. And, based on scientific knowledge, it establishes the objective that the average increase in temperature does not exceed two degrees with respect to the pre-industrial level and, as far as possible, 1.5. To achieve this, all signatories to the Paris Agreement must submit plans to cut emissions. But the targets now will lead to a temperature increase of at least 3.2 degrees. That is why the Paris Agreement itself requires that these national plans to cut emissions be revised upwards.

The UN and a group of states – including island countries and the European Union – are advocating that revisions to the targets be presented as early as 2020. And 84 countries, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Spain, have already committed to doing so. But the problem is not those who are, but those who are missing; neither the United States, nor China, nor India nor Russia have joined this initiative, promoted by the presidency of COP25. Moreover, some of these big emitters – together they account for almost 55% of all the greenhouse gases expelled by the global economy – do not want any call for countries to increase their 2020 cut plans in the final text of the summit. These large emitters are joined by other developing countries, such as Africans, who insist that what the developed countries have done so far must be analyzed and not only in terms of mitigation (cuts), but also in adaptation. That is, they demand a review of whether rich states have delivered on their promises to help developing countries adapt to climate change economically.

The other major bottleneck is Article 6, which refers to markets for the exchange of CO2 emission rights. The Kyoto Protocol generated millions of carbon units, which are used to offset emissions. For example, a country (or a company) that has to offset the CO2 it emits goes to existing markets and acquires those units. The problem, as Costa Rican Environment Minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez explains, is that in many cases there has been no real verification of the projects behind these units — for example, reforestation. Some countries that accumulate many units, such as Brazil, Australia or India, intend that they can continue to be used with the Kyoto Agreement. The other blocking point in this article is how to avoid double counting: that the same unit cannot be accounted for in the country that generates it and in which it is purchased.

EQUILIBRISM

The COP25 presidency tries to find a balance in the negotiation to please all parties. For example, including some reference in the final decision of the summit to the need to review the efforts that developed countries have made in financing in exchange for that text also calling on countries to present tougher emissions cut plans in 2020, according to sources in the negotiation. The same would happen with carbon markets, whose more technical part would be left to develop during 2020. Its regulation is important because from the next decade aviation and international navigation will have to offset their emissions with these units.

Source: The Country