Bequeathing a hot inheritance

The arrival of the Paris Agreement in 2015 as the outcome of the Conference of Parties (COP15) was received as a major milestone in efforts to tackle global warming. As has been the case with implementation of policy and multilateral agreements of this sort, deadlines were set for certain steps to be taken. Recall that the MDGs included goals of halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing free universal primary education by the year 2015. The year 2000 was also taken as a watershed for many issues to be resolved. Indeed that year became rather mythical.

For the Paris Agreement, the years 2020 and 2025 have taken on heightened significance. The same can be said about the year 2050 and the turn of the century at 2100. The thing is that these milestones come to pass rather quickly, sometimes much faster than we would prefer. Parties to the Paris Agreement gave themselves the target of reviewing their commitment to reduce emissions after five or ten years. Their commitments are captured in what is termed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The import of that agreement is that by 2020 or 2025 nations have to review and upscale their NDCs.

To ensure that no nation gets caught napping on the commitments, the United Nation’s Secretary General convened the Special Climate Summit in September 2019. That summit was aimed at getting nation to give an indication of their seriousness in taking climate action. Indeed, to help governments see where they stand in the build up to the review of their commitments by 2020, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) issued an important assessment in a report appropriately titled The Heat is On. That report while sounding optimistic revealed alarming shortfalls in the manner by which nations are taking the looming climate catastrophe.

In an opinion article titled Nigeria Must Lead on Climate Change, published in Daily Trust on30 September 2019, Mohamed Yahya, the UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, took a broad look at the implications of climate change for Nigeria and examined where Nigeria stands with regard to increasing ambition through the NDCs and highlighted ways by which the nation can show climate leadership. His article saw the seven pillars for climate action enunciated by President Buhari during the United Nations General Assembly as realistic and as offering the country the opportunity to take up a leadership role in climate action. He rightly noted that for this to happen, action must match the declaration. We note that although the president outlined his points under seven sections, there are multiple action areas embedded in those points and with the pledge of continued support from agencies such as the UNDP, it will be a missed opportunity if the ideas are left hanging without being implemented.

We should note also that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued another special report in September 2019 focusing on the impact of climate change on oceans and the marine ecosystems and dependent economies. In 2018 the IPCC had issued a report showing the huge difference that will exist between a 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise above pre industrial levels and a well below 2.0 degrees temperature rise. Indeed, the alarming conclusion of that report was that the world has a mere twelve years to take serious actions if climate chaos is to be avoided.

The report, The Heat is On, shows that there is a still a huge gap between intention and actual actions in the climate change arena. It shows that the most ambitious and forthcoming nations are the most vulnerable ones who at the same time are the least culpable in the league of nations responsible for stoking the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. This is a very significant finding that confirms that climate burden is being borne by poor nations both in terms of impacts and necessary actions.

According to the UNDP report, “of the 112 nations revising their climate plans, 75 are leading by example. Almost all of them are developing nations.” Some of these nations are proposing to increase their ambition in terms of transiting from polluting energy sources as well as embarking on adaptation actions for national preservation.

For Nigeria and many other vulnerable nations, climate action is largely predicated on availability of finance. The promise to provide $100 billion per year from 2020 as climate finance is not anywhere close to being realizable as rich nations are dodgy over the matter. In fact, it is estimated that the 1.5 degrees pathway requires investment in the energy sector to the tune of $2.4 trillion between 2016 and 2035. If losses due to climate events are added to that we can see that there is no ambition in the arena of climate finance.

The industrialized nations who are largely responsible for the crisis are hardly showing short term actions, an indication that they may be seeing the problem as somewhat distant. An additional reason for worry is that these nations are mostly planning to be “carbon neutral” by the year 2050. Carbon neutrality or “net zero” carbon are terms that should raise alarm signals because they indicate a determination to continue with business as usual or to continue with polluting activities while finding ways to offset the pollution.

A nation can achieve “net zero” carbon emission without taking any action beyond, for example, laying claim to ownership of carbon stock in trees in forests with the stand that the carbon in the trees are equal to the carbon they pollute through dirty activities. That makes them carbon neutral or positions them as net zero carbon economies. Unfortunately, nature does not work on the basis of mere carbon arithmetic. And, unfortunately, the entire concept is largely speculative and is not foolproof. If a country had calculated its carbon neutrality based on the carbon in trees in the portions of the Amazon that got razed, what would be the validity of their claim? There are yet others that bank on technofixes to achieve the so-called net zero status.

The concept of common but differentiated responsibilities and different capacities should be put into practice.. The industrialised nations definitely have to do more to reduce emissions than the less industrialised ones whose activities have contributed less to the carbon emissions. Nations should not only be required to indicate what they wish to contribute in terms of emissions reduction, rather the Paris Agreement should be amended to require nations to make mandatory emissions cuts based on science and not have them indicate mere intentions to act.

The demands of young people for real climate action can no longer be ignored. Recent youth climate hubs held across Nigeria showed that our youths are enthusiastic about taking climate action, are loaded with ideas and merely need an enabling platform to unleash their innovative ideas and energies.

Without a mandatory shift from fossil fuels and without taking necessary actions, the adults are set to bequeath a fiery inheritance to the children. And the children are right to insist that that is not reasonable.