Six months before the next United Nations climate conference, the federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, says he sees an increase in the ambition of “several countries” in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But time is running out, while compliance with the objectives of the Paris Agreement is still far from certain.
When this international climate agreement was signed in December 2015, the countries representing the bulk of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions committed to limiting global warming to below 2°C, compared to pre-industrial levels, while continuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
However, nearly seven years later, the concrete climate commitments of the States lead us towards a warming of at least 2.7°C (this has already exceeded 1.1°C). And to hope to limit the disruption of the terrestrial climate in order to respect the targets of the Paris Agreement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that global GHG emissions must peak by 2025. , before declining by at least 43% by 2030, compared to the level of 2019.
Rise in “ambition”
Despite the magnitude of the task, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault remains optimistic, while being cautious. “Several countries have increased their ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but not all major emitters have done so yet,” he said on Tuesday during a conference call. with the media, closing the 6th Ministerial Meeting on Climate Action (MoCA6) in Stockholm, Sweden. Canada hosted the meeting, which was attended by China, the United States and the European Union, among others.
The “discussions” on the need to be collectively more ambitious in terms of GHG reduction will continue over the coming months, added Mr. Guilbeault, in view of the next UN climate conference (COP27), which will take place will be held in November in Egypt.
It must be said that after COP26, held in November 2021 in Glasgow, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, deplored the lack of “political will”. The 197 States present had notably set aside a commitment to eliminate coal without a system for capturing and storing emissions from the global energy mix, after having diluted the passage relating to the end of fossil fuel subsidies.
Will the necessary climate commitments finally be met this year, seven years after the signing of the Paris Agreement? “The sooner our goals are aligned with the Paris Agreement and science, the sooner we can put in place the collective actions to achieve those goals. Will it happen this year? I sincerely hope so,” said Minister Steven Guilbeault, in response to a question from the To have to.
According to Guilbeault, the need for plans to achieve global carbon neutrality by 2050 is rapidly gaining ground. “There is an alignment of the planets and most major transmitters are in favor of that,” he said on Tuesday. To achieve this, it will be necessary not only to turn our backs on fossil fuels, but also to profoundly transform our cities, our modes of transport and our diet, underlined in April the most recent report of the IPCC.
$100 billion
MoCA6 was also an opportunity to re-discuss the pledge of developed countries to provide annual recurring funding of $100 billion to developing countries to help them reduce their GHG emissions and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis. This issue of climate finance, which has weighed on all negotiations in recent years, is still not completely settled.
This international aid is nevertheless essential, insisted Steven Guilbeault. “Unfortunately, it is the poorest who are hardest hit by climate change. And developing countries often have limited capacities to deal with it,” he said.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, governments spend $423 billion annually on fossil fuel subsidies, which contribute to aggravating the climate crisis.
Concrete impacts
The African continent “is currently experiencing both natural disasters and conflicts that are causing displacement on an unprecedented scale”, Congolese diplomat Raouf Mazou, Assistant High Commissioner of the UN Refugee Agency, lamented in an interview on Tuesday. at Agence France-Presse.
“Climate change-related disasters risk not only aggravating poverty, hunger and access to natural resources such as water, but also increasing instability and violence,” Mazou said.
In 2021 alone, according to a report by the Observatory on Internal Displacement Situations, 22.3 million people were internally displaced due to climate-related disasters worldwide, compared to 14.4 million uprooted by conflict and violence.
In addition, last Friday, the archipelago of Vanuatu declared a state of climate emergency and announced a plan of 1.2 billion dollars intended to mitigate the consequences of rising waters and violent climatic events. “We are in danger now, not just in the future,” Premier Bob Loughman said in a speech to Parliament.