By Andrew Hammond
The climate change agenda has had a lower profile for much of the pandemic. However, October will now see a global diplomatic super-surge, given that success at the Conference of the Parties (COP) 26 summit in Glasgow remains in the balance.
With about a month remaining before the COP begins, the start of this surge was showcased last month in New York at the United Nations, with several high-profile announcements that set the tone for a big October before the G20 summit. These include U.S. President Joe Biden's pledge to work with Congress to quadruple the U.S. financial commitment to help developing nations confront the climate crisis to $11.4 billion per year.
Yet, even with this new U.S. generosity, the target for the new fund of $100 billion from industrialized countries for climate-related support to the developing world is still an estimated $10 billion to $20 billion per year short. So other countries will need to dig deeper into their pockets in October too.
In this context, there are also concerns about the stance of big developing countries toward COP 26. Take the example of world leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, for instance, who have not yet confirmed their attendance.
Therefore, with much yet to fall in place, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned again last week that, "If we don't change course, we may be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than 3 degrees Celsius this century," compared to pre-industrial levels. He urged all countries to move as quickly as possible towards carbon neutrality in order to limit temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees.
This urgency is why a super-surge in climate diplomacy is needed to try to get a meaningful, sustainable deal over the line in November, and to seize what might still be a major window of opportunity to make progress on climate action decisively.
The host of COP 26, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Guterres, are therefore doubling down on the process of encouraging countries to adopt tougher emission reduction targets, so as to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius and to ensure that developing countries, which are on the frontline of the climate crisis, get increased financial support.
However, while November may be a crossroads in the battle against global warming, Guterres and other key players are also looking ahead beyond 2021. With Biden in power till at least January 2025, and potentially for four years more on top of that, there is now a 3- to 7-year opportunity to act in what the U.S. president has called a "decisive decade."
What the U.N. and others are hoping for ― if this opportunity can be harnessed ― is the development and implementation of a clear roadmap into the 2030s. While this bridge to the next decade requires greater definition, it involves not just setting targets, but also creating the framework for meeting them.
This roadmap requires implementation of the Paris and any Glasgow deals through national laws, where they are politically feasible, to make them most effective. The country's "commitments" put forward in 2015, which will hopefully be enhanced in November, will be most credible ― and durable ― if they are backed up by legislation where possible.
In the United States, part of the reason Trump was able to unravel Barack Obama's Paris ratification so relatively straightforwardly, is that it was politically impossible to get the treaty approved in the U.S. Congress. Obama therefore embedded the agreement through an executive order before Trump made his own counterpart executive actions, reversing his predecessor's order, which in turn, Biden has now re-introduced in 2021.
Compared to executive orders, legislation is more difficult to roll back. And this is the case especially when such laws are supported ― as in many countries ― by well-informed, cross-party lawmakers who can put in place a credible set of policies and measures to ensure effective implementation.
While the pledges made for Paris are not yet enough, the treaty has crucially put in place the domestic legal frameworks that are crucial building blocks to measure, report, verify and manage greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, countries are required under the agreement to openly and clearly report on emissions and their progress in reaching the goals in their national plans submitted to the U.N. They must also update these national plans every five years to highlight the measures being pursued to implement the goals, including in Glasgow.
In the future, the ambition must be that these frameworks are replicated in even more countries, and progressively ratcheted up. There are clear signs of this replication happening already in numerous states, from the Asia-Pacific region to the Americas, as countries seek to toughen their responses to global warming.
Going forward, Glasgow therefore still has the potential to help co-create, and implement, what could be a foundation of global sustainable development for billions around the world. This foundation must start with speedy, comprehensive implementation of the Paris Agreement, but needs to move even beyond that and capitalize on the greater climate ambition that November's summit will hopefully offer.
Andrew Hammond (andewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS in the London School of Economics.
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With about a month remaining before the COP begins, the start of this surge was showcased last month in New York at the United Nations, with several high-profile announcements that set the tone for a big October before the G20 summit. These include U.S. President Joe Biden's pledge to work with Congress to quadruple the U.S. financial commitment to help developing nations confront the climate crisis to $11.4 billion per year.
Yet, even with this new U.S. generosity, the target for the new fund of $100 billion from industrialized countries for climate-related support to the developing world is still an estimated $10 billion to $20 billion per year short. So other countries will need to dig deeper into their pockets in October too.
In this context, there are also concerns about the stance of big developing countries toward COP 26. Take the example of world leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, for instance, who have not yet confirmed their attendance.
Therefore, with much yet to fall in place, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned again last week that, "If we don't change course, we may be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than 3 degrees Celsius this century," compared to pre-industrial levels. He urged all countries to move as quickly as possible towards carbon neutrality in order to limit temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees.
This urgency is why a super-surge in climate diplomacy is needed to try to get a meaningful, sustainable deal over the line in November, and to seize what might still be a major window of opportunity to make progress on climate action decisively.
The host of COP 26, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Guterres, are therefore doubling down on the process of encouraging countries to adopt tougher emission reduction targets, so as to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius and to ensure that developing countries, which are on the frontline of the climate crisis, get increased financial support.
However, while November may be a crossroads in the battle against global warming, Guterres and other key players are also looking ahead beyond 2021. With Biden in power till at least January 2025, and potentially for four years more on top of that, there is now a 3- to 7-year opportunity to act in what the U.S. president has called a "decisive decade."
What the U.N. and others are hoping for ― if this opportunity can be harnessed ― is the development and implementation of a clear roadmap into the 2030s. While this bridge to the next decade requires greater definition, it involves not just setting targets, but also creating the framework for meeting them.
This roadmap requires implementation of the Paris and any Glasgow deals through national laws, where they are politically feasible, to make them most effective. The country's "commitments" put forward in 2015, which will hopefully be enhanced in November, will be most credible ― and durable ― if they are backed up by legislation where possible.
In the United States, part of the reason Trump was able to unravel Barack Obama's Paris ratification so relatively straightforwardly, is that it was politically impossible to get the treaty approved in the U.S. Congress. Obama therefore embedded the agreement through an executive order before Trump made his own counterpart executive actions, reversing his predecessor's order, which in turn, Biden has now re-introduced in 2021.
Compared to executive orders, legislation is more difficult to roll back. And this is the case especially when such laws are supported ― as in many countries ― by well-informed, cross-party lawmakers who can put in place a credible set of policies and measures to ensure effective implementation.
While the pledges made for Paris are not yet enough, the treaty has crucially put in place the domestic legal frameworks that are crucial building blocks to measure, report, verify and manage greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, countries are required under the agreement to openly and clearly report on emissions and their progress in reaching the goals in their national plans submitted to the U.N. They must also update these national plans every five years to highlight the measures being pursued to implement the goals, including in Glasgow.
In the future, the ambition must be that these frameworks are replicated in even more countries, and progressively ratcheted up. There are clear signs of this replication happening already in numerous states, from the Asia-Pacific region to the Americas, as countries seek to toughen their responses to global warming.
Going forward, Glasgow therefore still has the potential to help co-create, and implement, what could be a foundation of global sustainable development for billions around the world. This foundation must start with speedy, comprehensive implementation of the Paris Agreement, but needs to move even beyond that and capitalize on the greater climate ambition that November's summit will hopefully offer.
Andrew Hammond (andewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS in the London School of Economics.
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