UN climate talks resume with wary eyes on Trump

PARIS: Nations that adopted the Paris Agreement with champagne two years ago, regroup next week amid grim omens of climate peril and with an anxious eye on Donald Trump’s America.

The Nov 6-17 meeting in Bonn, Germany, is the first for UN climate envoys since the US president announced he will extricate Washington from the deal, carefully crafted over many years and helped over the finish line by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

In a year marked by severe flooding in Asia, drought in Africa and an exceptional North American hurricane season, Washington’s position “remains unchanged”, a state department official said.

“The United States intends to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as soon as it is eligible to do so”.

This can officially happen no sooner than Nov 4, 2020.

In the meantime, the world’s biggest historical greenhouse gas polluter will send a delegation “to represent US interests” at the 23rd round of annual UN talks, with Fiji as president, in the former German capital.

According to Fiji’s top negotiator Nazhat Shameem Khan, veteran US envoys have expressed the intention to continue to ‘take part constructively’.

“We should not entertain the US as a destructive force in Bonn,” warned Mohamed Adow of Christian Aid, which lobbies for poor country interests at the two-decades old UN process.

“Since they have already announced their decision to withdraw, they shouldn’t be actively influencing an agreement they don’t intend to be party to,” he told AFP.

A total of 195 nations agreed in the French capital in 2015 to limit average global warming caused by greenhouse gases from fossilfuel burning to under two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, and to 1.5 C if possible.

The 1 C mark has already been passed.

Countries, including the United States, made non-binding pledges of emissions cuts in support of the goal, though scientists say the shortfall is still far too great.

The talks open days after the UN’s environment organ, UNEP, warned that current pledges sentence the world to a 3 C-warmer future, fuelling heatwaves, superstorms, drought, and sea level rise.

Warned UNEP head Eric Solheim: “we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future.” — AFP