Alarm sounded, nations urgedtotakeaction
Nearly 200 nations try to thrash out consensus
KATOWICE,POLAND:WITH the direst warnings of impending environmental disaster still ringing in their ears, representatives from nearly 200 nations gathered on Sunday in Poland to firm up their plan to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The UN climate summit came at a crucial juncture in mankind’s response to planetary warming.
The smaller, poorer nations that will bear its devastating brunt are pushing for richer states to make good on the promises they made in the 2015 Paris agreement.
In Paris three years ago, countries committed to limit global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius, and to the safer cap of 1.5 degree Celsius, if at all possible.
But with only a single degree Celsius of warming so far, the world has already seen a crescendo of deadly wildfires, heatwaves and hurricanes made more destructive by rising seas.
Johan Rockstrom, designated director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the talks in the mining city of Katowice were crucial in nailing down how the Paris promises will work in practice.
Delegates at the COP24 talks “cannot and will not discuss if governments worldwide must achieve rapid greenhouse gas emission reductions to limit cli- mate risks - but how they can do this,” he said.
In Katowice, nations are being urged to agree to a rulebook palatable to all 183 states who have ratified the Paris deal.
This is far from a given: the dust is still settling from US President Donald Trump’s decision to ditch the Paris accord.
G-20 leaders on Saturday agreed a final communique after their summit in Buenos Aires, declaring that the Paris Agreement was “irreversible”.
But it said the US “reiterates its decision to withdraw” from the landmark accord.
Even solid progress in Katowice on the Paris goals may not be enough to prevent runaway global warming, as a series of major climate reports have outlined.
Just this week, the UN’S environment programme said the voluntary national contributions agreed in Paris would have to triple if the world was to cap global warming below 2C.
For 1.5C, they must increase fivefold.
A group of over 90 independent climate scientists in October said fossil fuel use must be slashed by half in the next 12 years if we have any hope of hitting the 1.5C target.
While the data are clear, a global political consensus over how to tackle climate change remains elusive.
Laurence Tubiana is CEO of the European Climate Foundation and, as France’s top negotia- tor, one of the main architects of the 2015 treaty. “Katowice may show us if there will be any domino effect” following the US withdrawal, she told AFP.
Gebru Jember Endalew, chair of the Least Developed Nations group of negotiators at the COP24, said, “International cooperation is the only way to address the global threat of climate change.”