The good, bad and the blah, blah, blah
My experience ‘on the inside’ of COP26 ranged from inspiring to infuriating.
I met delegates from the Global South, representatives of indigenous communities, trade unionists and campaigners who were all there with one goal – to save our planet from irreversible climate breakdown.
Unfortunately, despite over
20,000 of us having passes for the COP ‘blue zone’, it was ultimately a handful of governments from the world’s richest nations and the 500 lobbyists from fossil fuel companies who forced a disappointing and weak outcome on everyone else.
At one point, I met with the environment minister for the West African nation of Burkina Faso. Like other Global South governments, his team’s top objective for COP26 was to secure the ‘loss and damage’ payments they were promised years ago by rich nations like the UK.
These payments are intended to support the vulnerable communities who did the least to cause the climate crisis but who are bearing the brunt of it already.
In Burkina Faso, that means both floods and droughts, as well as huge loss of farmland to the everexpanding desert.
Back in 2009, COP committed to $100billion of funding each year from the Global North to the South, helping frontline communities adapt to and mitigate against the effects of climate breakdown which are already happening. Less than a quarter of that money has been delivered.
In the end, the Glasgow Agreement just “urged” rich countries to support our more vulnerable neighbours. That amounts to nothing more than what Greta Thunberg called “blah, blah, blah”, even as thousands lose their lives to climate breakdown.
This unfolding crisis requires urgent action.
Early analysis suggests that if all COP26 agreements are honoured, we’re still looking at 2.4ºC warming by 2100 - well above the 1.5ºC target set in 2015.
For low-lying island nations like the Maldives or Seychelles, 2.4ºC is, quite literally, a death sentence.
At least the Scottish Government is delivering, for example, by tripling the Climate Justice Fund through which we help countries in the Global South.
Despite the failure of negotiations, we have forged ahead ourselves on loss and damage funding, becoming the first nation to pledge money.
And our Green government ministers have had a huge impact in their first few weeks in post.
They’ve announced a sweeping ban on many single-use plastics, a voucher scheme for bike repairs, £55million for nature restoration and a January 31 launch date for our free bus travel scheme for under 22s.
Ross Greer