We continue to advance in the fight against Climate Change. Business and Climate Foundation, November 2020

The non-face-to-face celebration of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), which was due to start in Glasgow on November 9, does not mean that progress has not been made in this year of negotiations in the fight against Climate Change. It could not be otherwise if we consider that the entry into force of the Paris Agreement – a substitute for the Kyoto Protocol – is set for January 1, 2021.

They are not, of course, being negotiations to use. Face-to-face meetings have been very small, but virtual platforms have served to continue advancing in the negotiations and showing the progress made during this year 2020. Advances related to aspects such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation and mitigation to the effects of Climate Change, science, finance, technology, capacity building, transparency, gender, Climate Empowerment Action (ACE), and the preparation and presentation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

In this regard, he would like to point out the progress made this year in one of the main stumbling blocks in the negotiations, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement that regulates emissions exchanges between countries and companies. This article is one of the pillars on which the Agreement will be based, a bad wording and interpretation, could be a step backwards. The new versions of its text, to be approved, clearly define the role of emissions markets within the new framework agreed in Paris in 2015

In parallel, the UN has prepared Climate Dialogues. Virtual events that will provide an opportunity for UNFCCC Parties and other stakeholders to continue exchanging views and information to advance the work and maintain the momentum of the intergovernmental process on Climate Change.

In these dialogues, as the UN itself points out, it is not expected that “negotiations will take place, nor official decisions will be adapted” but its organization is a clear response to the firm commitment of governments, and other interested parties, something that should serve to “pave the way for success at COP26 in Glasgow”.

Countries have also continued to work internally in their fight against Climate Change. The announcement just a few weeks ago that China, the world’s leading emitter, promises to reach the peak of CO2 emissions before 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2060 is more than positive news that conveys the vocation of leadership in the fight against Climate Change that the Asian giant wants to assume. Recall that if China were to achieve its goal – carbon neutrality by 2060 – global warming projections would be cut by between 0.2 and 0.3 °C, the largest single reduction ever estimated.

Along with the Chinese impulse, we must highlight the situation of the United States that formally abandoned the Paris Agreement on November 4, just one year after notifying the UN. In this way, who has been the main emitter of CO2 in history is thus aligned with Eritrea, Iran, Libya, South Sudan, Turkey and Yemen and separates itself from the more than 190 signatory countries; something unfeasible when it currently emits 14% of the world’s GHGs. Trump has been a true denier about the effects of Climate Change; it has repealed numerous federal rules and placed people close to the fossil fuel industry at the helm of public environmental agencies.

President-elect Joe Biden’s election manifesto already indicated that, with the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, he would request a return to the Paris Agreement, cut emissions and invest 200,000 million dollars in the promotion of renewables and energy transition. It remains to be seen how the Republican majority in the Senate can slow down or modify these goals. To the effort of the Biden Administration, we must add that in the US there is a parallel climate agenda in which many cities, states of the Union, multinationals and entrepreneurs are working on urgent and efficient measures in the fight against Climate Change. It is a collective, well structured and financed and that increasingly has more weight and relevance internally and internationally, as we have observed in the most recent COPs.

As for our country, highlight the firm work that Teresa Ribera, the Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, is doing from her Fourth Vice Presidency. Examples of this are two recent initiatives. First, the approval of the “Long-Term Strategy for a Modern, Competitive and Climate-Neutral Spanish Economy in 2050” (ELP 2050). A document that responds to the commitments of Spain as a Member State of the European Union and with the Paris Agreement, and marks the path to achieve climate neutrality no later than 2050, identifying the opportunities offered by this transition in economic matters and job creation.

Along with this, the also recent approval of the Royal Decree of Auctions to award a regulated remuneration to renewable energies, encouraging both domestic and industrial consumers to take advantage of the potential of renewable energies as an alternative in the economic reactivation. Both initiatives of the Government of Spain fit perfectly within the European Green Deal that seeks to turn our old continent, before 2050, into the first “totally neutral” carbon on the planet.

In short, perhaps for many skeptics the non-celebration of the COP 26 in Glasgow could seem like a stoppage, but both the initiatives of the Parties and the countries point to the progress remaining firm, therefore We continue!

Business and Climate Foundation.

November 2020