"If Glasgow fails, everything fails."

At the end of a G20 which disappointed even the boss of the UN concerning the fight against climate change, the host of the crucial COP26 started Sunday in Scotland issued a solemn warning.

“We have made progress at the G20 (…), but it is not enough,” warned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from Rome, where a meeting of the 20 richest countries on the planet was being held.

Because if the G20 countries will not arrive completely empty-handed at the Glasgow climate conference, the commitments they agreed on Sunday in Rome have left many unsatisfied.

"I welcome the G20's renewed commitment to global solutions, but I leave Rome with dashed hopes - even if they are not buried," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Twitter. .

Like many world leaders, he then traveled to Scotland for COP26, a two-week meeting considered crucial for the future of humanity.

After a formal opening on Sunday, it will be really launched Monday and Tuesday by a summit.

Major absentees

More than 120 heads of state and government are expected, including the American Joe Biden, the French Emmanuel Macron, the Indian Narendra Modi and even the Australian Scott Morrison, an ardent promoter of coal of which his country is the world's largest exporter. .


But there will also be many absent, such as the Chinese Xi Jinping who has not left his country since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. China, the leading emitter of greenhouse gases, has just presented new reduction targets considered by many experts to be lacking in ambition.

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, another major polluting country, like the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, accused of promoting massive deforestation in the Amazon, will also be absent. “If the G20 was a dress rehearsal for COP26, then world leaders have missed their response,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International. And to promise that in Glasgow, where many activists are preparing to demonstrate, "we will demand the missing actions to protect from the climate crisis such as Covid-19".

"All we saw (at the G20) was half measures rather than concrete actions," added Friederike Röder, vice president of Global Citizen. "We must keep in mind that this is only the beginning", defended Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, whose country chaired the G20 this year, "we are going step by step". Joe Biden said there had been "tangible results", while saying he was "disappointed" that China and Russia did not "show" at the top.

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for her part, considered that the G20 meeting was "a good signal before Glasgow". The decisions of the G20 on the climate were all the more expected since this group, which brings together the main developed economies (EU, United States) but also large emerging countries such as China, Russia, India and Brazil, represents 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Glasgow will be "the last and the best hope" to manage to limit global warming to + 1.5 ° C, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, warned Sunday by opening the conference Alok Sharma, president of the COP26.

And world leaders can "make the success or bury the hope of keeping the target of + 1.5 ° C within reach."

"Humanity is faced with difficult, but clear choices," added the UN climate manager, Patricia Espinosa.

Unknown land

The final G20 communiqué reaffirmed the Paris objectives, while insisting that "keeping (the objective of) 1.5 ° C within reach will require significant and effective actions and commitments from all countries". However, it is precisely the specific commitments that are lacking, such as coal, a major source of carbon pollution, on which the G20 has not set national targets. Many countries, especially emerging countries, remain very dependent on this source for their electricity production, all the more so in the current context of the global energy crisis.

No precise date either to achieve carbon neutrality. The G20 only evokes the “mid-century”. A horizon less precise than the horizon of 2050 wanted in particular by the Italian presidency of the G20. Disappointment also on another burning issue of the COP, climate aid to poor countries. The commitment of the richest of 100 billion dollars per year from 2020 will not be kept ... before 2023.


However, the effects of the climate crisis are always more felt, droughts, deadly heat waves, mega-fires, floods ... And the poor are often on the front lines.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) added a page to the record on Sunday, announcing that the seven years from 2015 to 2021 will likely be the hottest on record, and warning that the global climate is entering "uncharted territory".

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