Glasgow/New York, November 13 – The UN climate change conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow adopted a final outcome document, which for the first time ever mentioned cutting fossil fuels to tackle global climate change impacts before closing a two-week summit. The document, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, is “an important document, but it is not enough,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“The approved texts are a compromise,” he said, reflecting the disappointment of many of the 197 governments and people attending the summit without getting concrete commitments for climate action. “They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today.”
The deal provides important steps forward “but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions. We must accelerate climate action to keep alive the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Guterres said in a video statement released at the close of the two-week meeting that began on October 31.
Guterres said that it is time for the world to go “into emergency mode” that calls for ending fossil fuel subsidies, phasing out coal, putting a price on carbon, protecting poor and vulnerable countries and delivering the $100 billion a year on climate finance commitment.
“We did not achieve these goals at this conference. But we have some building blocks for progress,” he said.
The final document called for “phase down” use of coal rather than “phasing out” which climate activists had demanded, and for phasing down “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies.
Turning to young people who demonstrated to demand concrete climate action, indigenous and women leaders and others who attended the summit, Guterres said, “I know you are disappointed. But the path of progress is not always a straight line. Sometimes there are detours. Sometimes there are ditches. But I know we can get there. We are in the fight of our lives, and this fight must be won. Never give up. Never retreat. Keep pushing forward”.
The adopted document, after several revised versions, was hammered out following hours of negotiations that skipped deadline in Glasgow. It expressed “alarm and utmost concern that human activities have caused around 1.1 °C of warming to date, that impacts are already being felt in every region, and that carbon budgets consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement temperature goal are now small and being rapidly depleted”
The document reaffirmed the 2015 Paris Agreement temperature goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels,” and it
recognized that “the impacts of climate change will be much lower at the temperature increase of 1.5 °C compared with 2 °C and resolves to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.”
It recognized that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C requires “rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century, as well as deep reductions in other greenhouse gases.”
It called on the 197 countries that signed the UN convention on climate change to make stronger pledges to cut global-warming emissions in this decade at the 27th COP to be held Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. It asked countries that failed to implement emission cutting programs to renew efforts and called on wealthy nations to “at least double” by 2025 the climate-related funds. Developed countries had promised to donate $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor and vulnerable countries cope with climate change impacts but that promise was not fulfilled under the pandemic.
The Glasgow summit was the 26th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCC. The next COP in 2022 will be held in the Red Sea resort Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and the 2023 COP will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates.
The final document did not fulfil all expectations but the summit produced some positive decisions. The United States and China, the world’s biggest emitters, made a surprise announcement that they will jointly work to cut more carbon emissions this decade while China said it will develop a first-time plan to reduce methane. More than 100 countries have agreed to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by the end of this decade, which is mainly a major program pushed forward by the Biden administration.
More than 100 countries, including the US, Brazil, China and Russia, pledged to end deforestation by 2030.
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