Act now or risk disaster, nations told at UN climate summit

Patrick GALEY, AFP Yahoo News 3 Dec 18;

Katowice (Poland) (AFP) - After the starkest warnings yet of the catastrophic threat posed by climate change, nations gathered in Poland on Sunday to chart a way for mankind to avert runaway global warming.

The COP24 climate summit comes at a crucial juncture in the battle to rein in the effects of our heating planet.

The smaller, poorer nations that will bare the devastating brunt of climate change are pushing for richer states to make good on the promises they made in the 2015 Paris agreement.

Three years ago countries committed to limit global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and to the safer cap of 1.5C if at all possible.

But with only a single degree Celsius of warming so far, the world has already seen a crescendo of deadly wildfires, heatwaves and hurricanes made more destructive by rising seas.

UN General Assembly president Maria Espinosa told AFP that mankind was "in danger of disappearing" if climate change was allowed to progress at its current rate.

"We need to act urgently, and with audacity. Be ambitious, but also responsible for the future generations," she added.

In a rare intervention, presidents of previous UN climate summits issued a joint statement as the talks got under way, calling on states to take "decisive action... to tackle these urgent threats".

"The impacts of climate change are increasingly hard to ignore," said the statement, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. "We require deep transformations of our economies and societies."

At the COP24 climate talks, nations must agree to a rulebook palatable to all 183 states who have ratified the Paris deal.

The road to a final rulebook is far from smooth: the dust is still settling from US President Donald Trump's decision to ditch the Paris accord.

G20 leaders on Saturday wrapped up their summit by declaring the Paris Agreement "irreversible".

But it said the United States "reiterates its decision to withdraw" from the landmark accord.

The UN negotiations got off to a chaotic start in the Polish mining city of Katowice Sunday, with the opening session delayed nearly three hours by a series of last-ditch submissions.

A string of major climate reports have cast doubt over the entire process, suggesting the Paris goals fall well short of what is needed.

- Data doesn't lie -

Just last week, the UN's environment programme said the voluntary national contributions agreed in Paris would have to triple if the world was to cap global warming below 2C.

For 1.5C, they must increase fivefold.

While the data are clear, a global political consensus over how to tackle climate change remains elusive.

"Katowice may show us if there will be any domino effect" following the US withdrawal, said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a main architect of the Paris deal.

Brazil's strongman president-elect Jair Bolsonaro, for one, has promised to follow the American lead during his campaign.

Many countries are already dealing with the droughts, higher seas and catastrophic storms climate change is exacerbating.

"A failure to act now risks pushing us beyond a point of no return with catastrophic consequences for life as we know it," said Amjad Abdulla, chief negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, of the UN talks.

A key issue up for debate is how the fight against climate change is funded, with developed and developing nations still world's apart in their demands.

Poorer nations argue that rich countries, which are responsible for the vast majority of historic carbon emissions, must help others to fund climate action.

"Developed nations led by the US will want to ignore their historic responsibilities and will say the world has changed," said Meena Ramam, from the Third World Network advocacy group.

"The question really is: how do you ensure that ambitious actions are done in an equitable way?"

'We are last generation that can stop climate change' – UN summit
Big cuts in carbon emissions and a rise in protection from extreme weather urgently needed
Damian Carrington The Guardian 3 Dec 18;

The UN climate change summit begins on Monday with a warning that today’s generation is the last that can prevent catastrophic global warming, as well as the first to be suffering its impacts.

Almost 200 nations were set to meet in Poland for two weeks, aiming to hammer out a vital agreement to turn the carbon-cutting vision set in Paris in 2015 into reality. Moves to rapidly ramp up action would be another key goal, with current pledges leaving the world on track for a disastrous 3C of warming.

The negotiations will take place against a background of ominous news: the past four years have been the hottest on record and global emissions were rising again, when they need to fall by half by 2030. Climate action must be increased fivefold to limit warming to the 1.5C scientists advise, according to the UN.

The political backdrop contains challenges as well, with climate change denial from the US president, Donald Trump, and attacks on the UN process from Brazil’s incoming Bolsonaro administration. The hosting of the summit by a coal-friendly Polish government further worries some observers. But the EU’s new intention to become climate neutral and the plummeting cost of renewable energy have been positives, while a year of extreme weather was anticipated to focus minds.

“We are clearly the last generation that can change the course of climate change, but we are also the first generation with its consequences,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the CEO of the World Bank. The bank announced on Monday that its record $100bn (£78bn) of climate funding from 2021-2025 would for the first time be split equally between projects to cut emissions and those protecting people from the floods, storms and droughts that global warming is making worse.

In recent years, just 5% of global funding has gone on protection, but 2018 has seen climate impacts hit hard, with heatwaves and wildfires in Europe and California and huge floods in India, Japan and east Africa. “We are already seeing the devastating impact of climate change,” Georgieva told the Guardian. “We strongly believe that action ought to go both on mitigation and on adaptation.”

“Climate extremes are the new normal,” said Prof Patrick Verkooijen, the CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, in the Netherlands. “The climate debate can no longer only be about the causes – it also needs to focus on how billions of people at risk can rapidly adapt.

Rich nations have promised $100bn a year by 2020 to help poorer countries adapt to climate change and develop clean energy. Negotiators in Poland would have to bring the two blocs together with firm agreement on how the promise would be fulfilled.

Gebru Jember Endalew, the chair of the 47-strong Least Developed Countries Group, said: “We represent almost one billion people, the people who are least responsible for climate change but among those most vulnerable to its effects. The longer poor countries have to wait [for funding], the larger the cost will become.”

The negotiators in Poland must also produce a rulebook governing how action pledged under the Paris agreement was tracked and reported to ensure all nations play their part.

“Fair and effective rules for accounting must be established, with special responsibilities for the big emitters such as the US and Europe but also China and India,” said Prof Johan Rockström, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “While defining a rulebook sounds boring, it is in fact essential.”

The role of the Polish hosts will be crucial and the deputy energy minister Michał Kurtyka has said it would focus on using forests to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, electric vehicles and ensuring workers in fossil fuel industries were helped into new jobs.

Poland generates 80% of its electricity from coal and the UN summit will take place in a coal mining town, Katowice. The Polish government has also allowed two coal companies to sponsor the summit.

“Having major coal companies as climate summit sponsors sends the worst possible signal at the worst possible time,” said Robert Cyglicki, Greenpeace’s director in Central and Eastern Europe. “It would be like Philip Morris sponsoring a health summit where a cigarette ban is supposed to be agreed. We will know this was a successful summit if coal companies regret sponsoring it.”

Many nations remain firmly committed to climate action, particularly France and China. But the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned last week that the rise of populism was undermining the political will of some countries to work with others. “We have more and more nationalist approaches being popular and winning elections,” he said. “This has led in my opinion to a lack of political will.”

“Every day, we witness the effects of the changing climate on poor and vulnerable people around the world,” said Adriana Opromolla, at NGO Caritas Internationalis. “Transformation is possible, but political will is needed to make it happen.”


Sir David Attenborough: Climate change 'our greatest threat'
Matt McGrath BBC 3 Dec 18;

Media captionSir David Attenborough addressing the climate change conference in Poland.
The naturalist Sir David Attenborough has said climate change is humanity's greatest threat in thousands of years.

The broadcaster said it could lead to the collapse of civilisations and the extinction of "much of the natural world".

He was speaking at the opening ceremony of United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Katowice, Poland.

The meeting is the most critical on climate change since the 2015 Paris agreement.

Sir David said: "Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change.

"If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

The naturalist is taking up the "People's Seat" at the conference, called COP24. He is supposed to act as a link between the public and policy-makers at the meeting.

"The world's people have spoken. Their message is clear. Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now," he said.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said climate change was already "a matter of life and death" for many countries.

He explained that the world is "nowhere near where it needs to be" on the transition to a low-carbon economy.

But the UN Secretary-General said the conference was an effort to "right the ship" and he would convene a climate summit next year to discuss next steps.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has announced $200bn in funding over five years to support countries taking action against climate change.

What's so different about this meeting?

This Conference of the Parties (COP) is the first to be held since the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C came out in October.

The IPCC stated that to keep to the 1.5C goal, governments would have to slash emissions of greenhouse gases by 45% by 2030.

But a recent study showed that CO2 emissions are on the rise again after stalling for four years.

In an unprecedented move, four former UN climate talks presidents issued a statement on Sunday, calling for urgent action.

They say "decisive action in the next two years will be crucial".

Meanwhile, the gap between what countries say they are doing and what needs to be done has never been wider.

So urgent is the task that some negotiators began their meetings on Sunday, a day before the official start.

Will global leaders be attending?
Yes, some 29 heads of state and government are due to give statements at the opening of the meeting.

The number is way down on the stellar cast that turned up in Paris in 2015, which perhaps indicates that many are seeing this as more a technical stage on the road to tackling climate change than a big bang moment.

But for the likes of China and the EU, the meeting is critical. They will want to show that international co-operation can still work even in the age of President Trump.

Rather than spending all their time working on how to increase ambitions to cut carbon, conference delegates are likely to focus on trying to finalise the technical rules of how the Paris agreement will work.

While the agreement was ratified in record time by more than 180 countries in 2016, it doesn't become operational until 2020.

Before then, delegates must sort out common rules on measuring, reporting and verifying (checking to avoid the misreporting of) greenhouse gas emissions, and on how climate finance is going to be provided.

"The rulebook is the thing that will absorb most of the negotiators' capacity at this year's COP," said Camilla Born, from the climate change think tank, E3G.

"It's no surprise, as agreeing the Paris rules is both technically and politically a complicated task - but it is worth it!"

Right now, that rule book runs to several hundred pages with thousands of brackets, indicating areas of dispute.

But what about limiting emissions?

Under the Paris agreement, each country decides for itself the actions it will take when it comes to cutting carbon. Some observers believe that the changed mood and the urgency of the science will prompt action.

"We are hoping that at COP24, countries will make declarations of how they will raise their ambitions by 2020. This is a very important moment," said Fernanda Carvalho with campaign group WWF.

"Two years is a short time span for that to happen. Countries need to act fast."

Why is the UN process slow-moving?

There is much frustration with the snail-like pace, especially among some campaigners who feel that the scale of the threat posed by rising temperatures hasn't been fully grasped by politicians.

"Governments across the world have completely failed to protect their citizens," said a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, the social movement that pushes for radical change on climate issues.

"Instead, they have pursued quick profit and big business. We need this to change. At COP24, we want to ensure that the focus is not just on getting the technical Paris rulebook as robust as possible, but also that governments do not lose sight of the bigger picture."

Others involved in the UN process say that real progress is being made in tackling one of the most complex problems ever faced by the world.

"We have a $300bn renewable energy economy at work today - it's not peanuts; it's an energy revolution that has unfolded on the back of, yes, a sometimes sticky climate negotiation process," said Achim Steiner, who heads the United Nations Development Programme.

How much of a role will money play in making progress in Poland?
Many developing countries see progress on issues around finance to be critical to moving forward. They have been promised $100bn every year from 2020 as part of the Paris agreement.

Some are sceptical about what they see as foot-dragging and obfuscation by richer countries when it comes to handing over the cash. Negotiators say that moving forward on finance is the lynchpin of progress in this meeting.

"A key finding of the recent IPCC report, and one that has often been overlooked, is that without a dramatic increase in the provision of climate finance, the possibility of limiting warming to 2C (to say nothing of the safer 1.5C goal) will irretrievably slip away," said Amjad Abdulla, chief negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States.

Are there concerns the meeting is in a country reliant on coal?
Yes - among government negotiators and observers alike. The fact that the conference is taking place in a strong coal region, in a city that is home to the biggest coal company in the EU, is troubling to many.

The Polish government says that it is sticking with the fuel, and has announced that it is planning to invest next year in the construction of a new coal mine in Silesia.

This bullish approach has drawn condemnation from some.

"Unfortunately, this week's announcement by the [meeting's] Polish presidency that it will include coal companies as sponsors of the COP sends a very worrisome signal before the conference even begins," said Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law.

Will President Trump and the US feature at all?
Although the US has withdrawn from the Paris agreement, it cannot leave until 2020, so its negotiators have been taking part in meetings and have not obstructed the process. America is expected to participate in COP24.

However, given the President's well known love of coal, it has been reported that the White House will once again organise a side event promoting fossil fuels. A similar event at the last COP provoked outrage from many delegates.

UN climate conference 03 Dec- 14 Dec 2018

The summit comes three years after the 2015 Paris accord on climate change, at which all countries agreed a plan to limit carbon emissions. Now is the moment governments must start deciding what to do to make sure that plan is put into effect.

"The question really is: how do you ensure that ambitious actions are done in an equitable way?"