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UN negotiations struggle to stave off climate chaos

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MADRID: United Nations climate negotiations in Madrid were set to wrap up on Friday with even the best-case outcome likely to fall well short of what science says is needed to avert a future ravaged by global warming.


The COP25 summit comes on the heels of climate-related disasters across the planet, including unprecedented cyclones, deadly droughts and record-setting heat waves.


Scientists have amassed a mountain of evidence pointing to even more dire impacts on the near horizon, while millions of youth activists are holding weekly strikes demanding government action.


As pressure inside and outside the talks mounts, old splits between rich polluters and developing nations have re-emerged over who should slash greenhouse gas emissions by how much, and how to pay the trillions needed to live in a climate-addled world.


Newer fissures, meanwhile, between poor, climate vulnerable nations and emerging giants such as China and India — the world’s No1 and No 4 emitters — may further stymie progress.


To not lose time, the 12-day meeting was moved at the last minute from original host Chile due to social unrest.


But observers and delegates said negotiators had largely failed to live up to the conference’s motto: “Time for Action”.


“We are appalled at the state of negotiations,” said Carlos Fuller, lead negotiator for the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), many of whose members face an existential threat due to rising sea levels.


“At this stage we are being cornered. We fear having to concede on too many issues that would


damage the very integrity of the Paris Agreement.”


SHIFTING ALLIANCES


The narrow aim of the Madrid negotiations is to finalise the rulebook for the 2015 Paris climate accord, which enjoins nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees Celsius.


Earth has already warmed 1 C, and is on track to heat up another two or three degrees by 2100.


But “raising ambition” on emissions remains the overarching goal in Madrid.


Host nation Spain said on Thursday that rich and developing nations alike were stalling.


“There are two very clear visions,” Spain’s minister for energy and climate change Teresa Ribera told reporters.


“There are those that want to move quicker and those that want to hide behind things which aren’t working, so as not to advance.”


The deadline under the Paris treaty for revisiting carbon cutting commitments — known as NDCs, or nationally determined contributions — is 2020, ahead of the next climate summit in Glasgow.


But Madrid was seen as a crucial launch pad where countries could show their good intentions. Nearly 80 countries have said they intend to do more, but they only represent 10 percent of global emissions.


Conspicuously absent are China, India and Brazil, all of whom have indicated they will not follow suit, insisting that first-world emitters step up. — AFP


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