A new week opened on Monday at COP26 in Glasgow.
The last, which will have to put an end to the official negotiations of this UN climate summit.
The first week was above all marked by an anthology of new initiatives and ambitious coalitions.
Probably like never before.
But these announcements have their share of inaccuracies and are not legally binding, warn NGOs.
Not enough, therefore, to determine the success of the event.
The challenge of the last few days in Glasgow will therefore be to translate these commitments into the final decision of COP26.
Not won?
From our special correspondent at COP26 in Glasgow
Twenty-three states, including Poland and Vietnam, which are committing for the first time to phase out coal for their electricity production. Eighty others who have announced that they want to reduce their emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, by 30% by 2030. Twenty-four countries and public actors who sign an agreement banning the financing of fossil fuels (petroleum, gas, coal) abroad by 2023. India, which is aiming for carbon neutrality in 2070… Or these 450 financial players, representing some 130,000 billion dollars in assets, who promise to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
In Glasgow, the first week of COP26 resulted in an avalanche of ambitious announcements from heads of state and private actors.
Like never ?
Increasingly publicized, these UN climate summits have become privileged moments to proclaim new emission reduction promises and forge new coalitions.
And in Glasgow, “it was the first time, since the COP22 in Marakech, that there have been so many heads of state and government to come to the start of the COP.
And above all by staying there for a long time, often 48 hours, ”slips Pierre Cannet,“ advocacy ”manager at WWF France.
Promises with missing details
Not worse, in a way. On October 26, just before this COP26 starts, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) pointed out the lack of ambition in the commitments made by countries to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Put end to end, these promises put us on a trajectory of + 2.7 ° C at the end of the century [compared to the pre-industrial era]. Last Thursday, the International Energy Agency took over the calculation by integrating the new promises made in Glasgow, estimating at + 1.8 ° C the trajectory on which they are now leading us. "A historic moment," noted the agency, stressing that "this is the first time that governments have proposed sufficiently ambitious objectives to keep global warming below 2 ° C. "
Do these promises still have to be kept? “These initiatives and coalitions do not legally bind the countries which launch them,” recalls Clément Sénéchal, “climate” spokesperson at Greenpeace France. These are objectives that they set for themselves, there are no obligations of result, no systems of penalties if they do not meet them. Often, too, the devil is hiding in the detail of these flashy announcements. Thus, when these 450 large financial institutions, weighing $ 130,000 billion in assets, commit to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, “that does not mean that they intend to stop financing energy projects. fossils * ”, warns Myrto Tilianaki, advocacy officer at CCFD-Terre Solidaire. " In the same way,the 80 countries which have committed to reducing their methane emissions by 30% have only slightly specified the sectors they intended to target in order to achieve this ** ”, regrets Aurore Mathieu,“ international policies ”manager at the Climate Action Network (RAC), federation of French climate NGOs.
Transcribe the new commitments in the final decision of the COP
These are therefore missing details.
There are others, that the RAC lists in the anthology of announcements which punctuated the beginning of this COP26.
The risk is that we stop at these to decree the success of these fifteen days.
For Clément Sénéchal, it is the game - barely veiled - of the British presidency.
“Before the summit began, she multiplied pessimistic communications on the chances of success of the negotiations.
One way to get rid of a possible failure, he begins.
At the same time, it publishes an avalanche of press releases on these new commitments which are not, however, part of the official negotiation process.
"
This is the whole issue of this second week which opens in Glasgow: "translating these new commitments into official negotiations, in particular the final decision of the COP26", insists Aurore Mathieu.
It is with this text that the COPs end.
It recapitulates all the points of climate action discussed during the two weeks and on which the 197 countries represented agree and commit, this time in a much more binding way.
These "technical" negotiations have already started in the first week, carried out by diplomatic delegations in the shadow of speeches at the rostrum of heads of state.
They continue at a higher political level with the entry on the track, this Monday, of ministers ***, who will politically arbitrate the remaining points of disagreement.
Use promises to arrive at an ambitious final decision
To reach this final decision, the many initiatives and alliances of the first week can still prove useful despite their imperfections.
"They can inject an interesting dynamic into official negotiations," said Clément Sénéchal and Pierre Cannet.
This is particularly the case on the issue of climate finance, which plagues the COP against a backdrop of North-South tension.
Here again, the first week was filled with promising announcements in this area.
Several countries, including Norway and Japan, have announced a significant increase in their funding allocated to "adaptation", the poor relation of climate finance to date, but crucial since it aims to help countries in the South. to deal with the consequences of climate change.
Fanny Petitbon, advocacy manager for the NGO Care France, adds the question of “loss and damage”, which concerns the financial reparations to be made to countries which have suffered the first impacts of climate change, to which they nevertheless contribute the least. "It is a subject which is rising more and more on the political agenda at the request of the countries of the South, on which we start from a long way off," she begins. Despite everything, on the first day of COP26, Scotland pledged to mobilize 1 million pounds [1.17 million euros] to specifically finance losses and damages. It is certainly a drop in the ocean, but a nice political poker game, Scotland being the first developed nation to do so. "
All the hope then of the RAC is that these scattered announcements on the adaptation or the losses and damages gradually move the lines and find themselves, one way or another, in the final decisions of this COP26. It won't be easy. The question of fossil fuels allows us to get an idea of this. “With these coalitions announced in the first week to get out of coal more quickly or stop funding fossil fuel projects, we can hope that these energies will be mentioned in the final decision of COP26,” begins Clément Sénéchal. At least countries recognize them as the main source of GHG emissions, which would be a first step. "In the first" draft "of this final decision, published Sunday, it was missed: the fossils were largely obscured ... We can say that we are only Monday, after all.
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* These 450 financial players could choose, to achieve carbon neutrality, not to reduce their funding for fossil fuel projects, which emit a large amount of greenhouse gases, as much as necessary, but rather to compensate.
This does not have the same value for CCFD-Terre Solidaire.
** No mention is made in particular of the need to act on intensive livestock farming, a major source of methane emissions, explains Clément Sénéchal.
*** For France, it will be Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecological Transition, and Jean-Baptiste Djebarri, Minister of Transport.
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