“Rich countries, historically responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, must do more”, estimates Sunday, November 14 on franceinfo Aurore Mathieu, International Policy Manager of the Climate Action Network. She regrets that the agreement adopted the day before by the some 200 countries participating in the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, does not include specific funding by the developed countries of the “loss and damage” suffered by the poorest countries due to global warming.
>> COP26: timid limitation of fossil fuels, no new aid to vulnerable countries … What to remember from the conference on the climate crisis
This mechanism, included in the United Nations Convention on Climate Change of 1992, has still not been put in place, particularly under pressure from the United States, which fears the legal implications of such a commitment.
“The COP has not provided any concrete response for these communities affected by global warming.”
Aurore Mathieu, International Policy Manager of the Climate Action Networkto franceinfo
Aurore Mathieu points to the “lack of ambition” of the richest and most developed countries: the United States, the European Union, Australia and Japan. “As their climate action is not up to par”, this allows countries such as “India, South Africa, China to say, rightly, that if the rich and developed countries do not do their part, it is not for them to do theirs first.” New Delhi and Beijing imposed changes in the final text adopted at COP26, making the commitments made by signatory countries on fossil fuels less binding.
However, Aurore Mathieu considers that the COPs remain “important because they make it possible to shed light on these imbalances between the richest countries, which have the capacity to act against global warming, and the most vulnerable, who suffer the consequences”. But climate action must, she says, “take place at national and local level”. It is at this level “that we can push the state to act”, citing in particular the French State prosecuted in “the Affair of the Century” and condemned for its climate inaction on October 14, by the administrative court of Paris. It must repair and compensate for the ecological damage caused by failure to meet the 2015-2018 greenhouse gas emissions targets by December 31, 2022 at the latest.