This text is taken from the Courrier de la Planète of November 22, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
Despite the evidence of the climate emergency, the 27th UN climate conference (COP27) ended without much progress and with its share of particularly virulent criticism from experts well aware of the situation and the process of negotiations on the future of the planetary climate.
“This COP has weakened the obligations for countries to present new and more ambitious commitments,” lamented Laurence Tubiana, architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement. question to which this COP has not answered”, deplored for his part the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.
Fellow at the Center for International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal and Senior Advisor at Copticom, Hugo Séguin also deplores the slow progress, but is not surprised. “The COP process is paralyzed by the weight of its own complexity, when we need to move much faster. It’s a process that is going more and more slowly, ”says the man who has been following this type of conference for several years.
In particular, he recalls that the notion of “loss and damage” has been inscribed since COP19, that is, the one organized in 2013 in Warsaw. However, it was only this year that the countries agreed to create a fund to help the most vulnerable countries to cope with the already very real impacts of global warming. And still, several questions remain to be settled, including that of the countries which will have to contribute to this fund of several billion dollars.
Concrete measures
In this context, Mr. Séguin believes that it is necessary to review the COP formula to speed up decision-making that would have concrete effects. “We should ask ourselves how we should reform the process so that it pays off more in the fight against climate change. »
As examples of specific measures, he mentions the idea of agreeing to implement “a price on carbon” on a global scale, to impose the energy transition in highly polluting industrial sectors or to give a deadline for the sale of gasoline vehicles.
If the COPs focused on achieving such measures, he said, the results would be there sooner than by continuing to rely on the current formula.
At COP26 in 2021, States agreed to table new commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in order to get closer to the Paris Agreement objective of limiting global warming to +1, 5° C, compared to the pre-industrial era. However, a handful of countries have kept their word and the UN is still forecasting a warming that could exceed 2.5° C, assuming that all of them respect their promises.
“If we say that we are in a climate crisis, we must govern ourselves accordingly. It is therefore necessary that the political decision-makers arrive with proposals at the COP, but also that they give themselves the means to implement them quickly. We need to shorten the decision-making and implementation time,” says Hugo Séguin.
This question of the implementation of the promised climate measures also applies to Canada, according to him. He cites as an example the cap on greenhouse gas emissions for the oil and gas sector, but also the objective of planting two billion trees by the end of the decade.