Long and delicate negotiations, while waiting for a draft global agreement. The COP26 which has been taking place for nearly two weeks in Glasgow (Scotland) is coming to an end, Friday 12 November, and a joint declaration by the 197 parties the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is still long overdue.
But on the sidelines of these negotiations, the climate conferences are also the place where coalitions, groups and other alliances are formed around various commitments to fight effectively against the climate crisis. France has thus taken part in several agreements announced since the beginning of November within the framework of a COP presented as decisive for the decades to come. Franceinfo lists the main initiatives in which Paris has decided to participate.
Reducing oil and gas production
Code name: Boga (for “Beyond Oil & Gas”, or “Beyond oil and gas”, in French). France joined, Thursday, November 11, an international coalition whose vocation is toaccelerate the phase-out of fossil fuel production by setting a deadline (which has yet to be determined). On the initiative of Costa Rica and Denmark, this group should determine the “practices to help governments meet their commitment to phase out oil and gas production”, writes the website of the Ministry of Ecological Transition. The idea being to gradually abandon fossil fuels, a condition sine qua non to achieve the objectives set by the Paris Agreement signed in 2015.
However, it is a “small” coalition of a dozen countries or regions at this stage: Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Italy, Ireland, Greenland, New Zealand, Wales, Portugal, Quebec, Sweden and a (large) American state, California.
Stopping fossil fuel financing abroad without carbon capture techniques
France took its time, but it ended, on the very last day of the COP, by joining the coalition of countries pledging to put an end, by the end of 2022, to the financing of foreign projects. ‘fossil fuels without carbon capture techniques.
This agreement therefore involves around twenty countries, including the United States and Germany. G20 nations had previously agreed to stop supporting overseas coal-fired power plant projects, but this new plan includes gas and oil for the first time and contains the promise to redirect money from those investments. towards renewable energies. If this commitment is kept, more than $ 15 billion should benefit clean energy, experts say.
Stop deforestation by 2030
As of November 2, nearly 180 countries they are engaged stop deforestation by 2030. This agreement plans to mobilize 16.5 billion euros for the protection and restoration of forests. In details, twelve countries, including France, will commit to jointly mobilizing 10.3 billion euros in public funds between 2021 and 2025, to fight against deforestation. To this sum should be added 6.24 billion euros of private investment. Among these funds, 1.3 billion euros will be dedicated in particular to the protection of the Congo Basin, which is home to the second largest tropical forest in the world after the Amazon.
This commitment is, in reality, not really new, since it echoes the New York Declaration on Forests, Who dates 2014. At the time, many countries committed to halving deforestation by 2020 and – already – to end it in 2030. An objective that remains far too distant, say the NGOs.
Reducing methane emissions
Also on November 2, around 100 nations, which emit more than 40% of global methane emissions, pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30% by 2030, compared to levels from 2020. Methane (CH4), emitted by agriculture and livestock, fossil fuels and waste, is the second greenhouse gas linked to human activity after carbon dioxide (CO2). Even if it is less talked about, its warming effect is about 29 times greater per kilogram than that of CO2 over a hundred years, and about 82 times over a period of twenty years.
The European Union and the United States are in the game, but the three biggest polluters – China, Russia and India – are still missing, which limits the scope of this announcement.