COP26: Striving for accountability

IN THE aftermath of the Glasgow climate conference, COP26, Caribbean countries remain in line for hotter temperatures, more frequent and longer droughts, angrier storms, and of large swathes of their territories being submerged in higher seas.

It is not that nothing happened in Glasgow. It just was not enough. Or, what happened was not underpinned with sufficient urgency to reverse the existential threats facing small island developing states (SIDS), like those of this region. Which is why the end of Glasgow can only mean the start of a new, more aggressive phase of the campaign for survival by the regional community, CARICOM, in collaboration with similarly threatened countries.

The bottom line: they must maintain the pressure for the world’s big polluters to rapidly decrease their emission of greenhouse gases, and for developed countries to fulfil their undertaking to fund mitigation and adaptation efforts in the developing world. That demand is profoundly moral.

Indeed, ahead of Glasgow, climate ministers of the Caribbean Community reminded that the earth’s temperature had already risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial period, and of the warning by the international panel of climate scientists that the current decade was the world’s final opportunity to contain the rise to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, by the end of the century. In fact, on the current trajectory, a 1.5 degrees Celsius hike could be passed by the 2030s, reaching up to 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

“...Even at 1.5°C, SIDS will continue to experience the worsening of slow onset events and extreme events, including more intense storms, along with heavy or continuous rainfall events, ocean acidification, increased marine heatwaves, rising sea levels together with storm surges, resulting in coastal inundation, saltwater intrusion into aquifers and shoreline retreat, as well as the continued overall decline in rainfall, increased aridity, and more severe agricultural and ecological droughts,” the ministers observed. Or, from the perspective of CARICOM, which emits 0.2 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, it is already “disproportionately bearing the costs of a climate crisis it did not create”.

CLEAN POWER

At Glasgow, there was agreement that countries should rapidly deploy clean power-generation technologies and accelerate the “phase-down of unabated coal power”, as well as the “phaseout of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. Indeed, the agreement made 1.5 degree above pre-industrial levels the new target for the rise in earth’s temperature by the end of the century, rather than as the aspirational possibility of the Paris Agreement.

For this to happen, as the agreement acknowledged, it will require “rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century, as well as deep reductions in other greenhouse gases”. However, most climate analysts say that with the commitments now on the table, the earth’s warming will be 2.1 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, above the target set in Paris.

Alok Sharma, the British minister who chaired the Glasgow conference, appropriately concluded that while, as an ideal, it remained alive, “the pulse of 1.5 is weak”. Said United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres: “We must accelerate climate action to keep alive the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.”

This newspaper agrees. As should any sane human. G20 countries, which account for 70 per cent of global emissions, have the greatest potential, as was noted by the CARICOM ministers, to accelerate to a decarbonised future. This will require that they substantially enhance their nationally determined commitments on reducing emissions for the world to meet a target of net zero discharge by 2050.

Reducing emissions on the required scale, however, needs a convergence of policy, politics and commerce. Developed countries’ governments understand fully well the existential threats posed by global warming, especially to countries like those in the Caribbean. They know, too, what is to be done to reverse the crisis. But they don’t act for the fear of political backlash from their electorates, if they believe that the necessary policies needed to make things better will weaken growth and undermine economic well-being.

Governments and climate campaigners, therefore, have to aggressively open new fronts in the battle against global warming, which means co-opting business to the campaign by doing a better job at making not only the moral case, but the economic virtue of a decarbonised future.

CANNOT BE PASSIVE BYSTANDER

The Caribbean, in this respect, cannot be a passive bystander, assuming that it is merely peripheral to the development of the technologies or the economic decision-making that are critical to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The region should leverage existing relationships with countries of the global South and other small island developing states – mostly the victims, rather than perpetrators, of global warming – in making the economic, and moral, case against pouring huge loads of CO2 into the atmosphere. This argument need not await formal climate conferences. It must be segued to at every summit, on whatever issue, in every discussion with G20 and G7 diplomats, and in every cable dispatched to the capitals of these countries.

At the same time, Caribbean leaders – and those with whom they foster country-saving partnerships – must be insistent that the “deep regret” expressed at COP26 over the failure of developed countries to fulfil their promise to mobilise US$100 billion a year for developing ones to finance climate mitigation projects, move urgently beyond regret to implementation. CARICOM must establish its own mechanism to track adherence to the Climate Finance Delivery Plan, and any double-counting and other obfuscations therein. They must ensure that there are real and effective transfers to the SIDS and other climate-vulnerable countries, and demand the end of the iniquitous arrangements that limit transfers from multilateral lending institutions to so-called middle-income developing countries, such as CARICOM’s members.

In other words, part of CARICOM’s contribution to fighting global warming is holding the perpetrators accountable.