The EU must step up in Glasgow on climate
The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, may not appeal to everyone — especially European Union leaders put off by Brexit. But the UK is hosting the latest round of global climate negotiations, COP26, in Glasgow next month, so the EU must put aside its issues with Johnson and come ready to work.
At least 15 million people today are stateless, and millions more are threatened with national exclusion. The issue of statelessness thus demands urgent attention, as do works of history that shed light on the problem. Up to this point, the history of the global climate talks held under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a tale of two European cities: Copenhagen and Paris.
In 2009, world leaders and their national negotiators came together in Copenhagen to conclude a comprehensive treaty that would commit the entire world to farreaching action to prevent the worst ravages of global warming. It didn’t happen. Too many of the big players (and emitters) arrived without any viable proposals for reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, and EU leaders found themselves hanging around in the corridors while the United States, China, and India crafted a nonbinding agreement that left many issues unresolved. Representatives from the most vulnerable countries looked on in despair as their interests once again were sidelined.
A key political miscalculation doomed the Copenhagen meeting to fail: While the EU is the champion of its own people, it is also a vital partner to those countries most affected by the terrifying consequences of climate change. Without European partnership – and by that I mean real political, practical, and financial aid – the most vulnerable are left with no role in negotiations and no choice in terms of the sources and conditions of the support available to them. But the EU learned from this experience. In 2011, at COP17 in Durban, South Africa, the EU led the way with a road map to ensure a voice for those most at risk. That initiative delivered an outcome that paved the way for the Paris climate agreement at COP21 four years later.
In 2015, when world leaders came to Paris, the Europeans again played a leading role. The EU helped form the High Ambition Coalition, an informal group of developed and developing countries committed to supporting the common goal of a genuine transition to a green economy. This time, the US and China signalled that they understood the shared interest in climate action. The target of limiting global warming to 1.5º Celsius relative to preindustrial levels was established, and developed countries pledged to fund the poorest countries’ efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change and achieve sustainable economic growth. The onus was on the major economies to act fast and share the benefits of their wealth and knowledge.
The Paris agreement was signed, and suddenly the future looked a little brighter. But in the six years since, annual global GHG emissions have continued to climb, even in the pandemic-stricken year of 2020. Climate models have proven devastatingly accurate, as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and killer heat waves grow in frequency and intensity. And this, as we know, is only the beginning.
While discussions of the climate crisis once were considered a problem for future generations or those already living in extreme conditions, now Europe is suffering, too. Germans and Belgians are being killed by floods, and extreme temperatures are upending entire communities across the Mediterranean.
And so, we arrive at Glasgow. This is the year all Paris agreement signatories, having assessed their progress, were meant to return to the table prepared to increase their ambition for action at home and, in the case of richer countries, deliver support to poorer ones.