The ecological crisis, the mother of all crises, is also a human rights crisis, which the COP26 in Glasgow took little account of, even in the way it was organized – including some, excluding others . The British government had promised to make this 26e climate summit (30,000 registered from 120 countries), which ends on Friday, the most ” inclusive “ of all. But the fact is, reported The Guardian, that two-thirds of the civil organizations that normally send delegates to these summits have given up on going to Glasgow this year due to ‘vaccine apartheid’, changes to travel rules, exorbitant travel costs and system unpleasant British immigration. And that the most affected by this situation, one will have guessed it, were the NGOs of the poorest countries, the very ones that are most vulnerable to global warming.
It is therefore not quite an exaggeration to qualify COP26, as some have done, as a “VIP summit”. In the sense that it will have done very little to reduce the North-South civic divide, although these NGOs play an essential role in their country.
The British newspaper MailOnline “had fun” counting the private jets landing at Glasgow Airport when the summit opened. He counted 400! An above all discouraging count, to be put in parallel with the fact that the COP26, like all the others before it, absurdly struggles to reach a consensus on the simple mention in its final declaration of the role of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal). ) in global warming, yet responsible for 80% of CO emissions2 worldwide.
It was Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who declared in September that “the interrelated crises linked to pollution, climate change and biodiversity” were “the most important challenge of our time. epoch ”for the exercise of human rights – right to life, liberty, security, work, education… On this subject, there are reports of the social damage that the disruption does and will do. climate. It is that of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, according to which more than 21 million people are displaced each year by natural disasters linked to warming – twice the number of migrants driven out by violence and conflict. It is again that of the Institute for Economics and Peace, an Australian think tank that estimates that more than a billion people risk being driven from their homes within 30 years, mainly in regions (Africa, Middle East, South Asia…) where the absence of resilience measures in the face of water shortages and poor harvests will combine with the pressures of population growth.
It is true that, when it comes to the issue of populations uprooted by global warming, the projections are notoriously imprecise. However, the problem of refugees and climate migrants is bound to increase. Therefore, it is irresponsible, not to say inhuman, that rich countries continue to delay in keeping their iconic pledge to help developing countries, to the tune of US $ 100 billion annually for five years, adjust to the deregulation.
Not to mention that, failing to act upstream on environmental issues, northern governments risk further fueling populist and xenophobic reactions. We know the demons that possess the United States on the migration issue. Europe is not left out: countries like Great Britain, Poland (grappling with the cynical manipulation of migrants by the Belarusian dictatorship), Greece and Croatia are inclined to apply policies of refoulement of migrants , having less and less scruples to violate the most basic protections conferred by international conventions. The risk is that this short-sighted trend will intensify.
If the COP26 gave rise to potentially promising commitments – enhanced by the unexpected announcement of a common Sino-American ecological front -, for the time being, they remain too incomplete and too weak to limit global warming to 1.5. degree Celsius. For example, and barring a last-minute surge, the participating States will not have managed to agree to revise as early as next year, and not just every five years as provided for in the Paris Agreement, their objectives. reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Which is unheard of, given the challenges. It was the Climate Vulnerability Forum, a partnership of 55 developing countries particularly affected by the crisis, which made it an urgent proposal. Leading opponent to this proposal: Saudi Arabia, a very poor student of the energy transition and a staunch violator of human rights – a country which we hope will run out of influence as soon as possible.