Nina Chestney, Bate Felix and Agnieszka Barteczko, Reuters Yahoo News 16 Dec 18;
KATOWICE, Poland (Reuters) - Nearly 200 countries overcame political divisions late on Saturday to agree on rules for implementing a landmark global climate deal, but critics say it is not ambitious enough to prevent the dangerous effects of global warming.
After two weeks of talks in the Polish city of Katowice, nations finally reached consensus on a more detailed framework for the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit a rise in average world temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
"It is not easy to find agreement on a deal so specific and technical. Through this package you have made a thousand little steps forward together. You can feel proud," Polish president of the talks Michal Kurtyka told delegates.
After he struck the gavel to signal agreement had been reached, ministers joined him on the stage, hugging and laughing in signs of relief after the marathon talks.
Before the talks started, many expected the deal would not be as robust as needed. The unity which underpinned the Paris talks has fragmented, and U.S. President Donald Trump intends to pull his country - one of the world's biggest emitters - out of the pact.
At the 11th hour, ministers managed to break a deadlock between Brazil and other countries over the accounting rules for the monitoring of carbon credits, deferring the bulk of that discussion to next year, but missing an opportunity to send a signal to businesses to speed up their actions.
Still, exhausted ministers managed to bridge a series of divides to produce a 156-page rulebook - which is broken down into themes such as how countries will report and monitor their national pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions and update their emissions plans.
Not everyone is happy with everything, but the process is still on track and it is something to build on, several ministers said.
"While some rulebook elements still need to be fleshed out, it is a foundation for strengthening the Paris Agreement and could help facilitate U.S. re-entry into the Paris Agreement by a future presidential administration," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
AMBITION, AMBITION, AMBITION
Some countries and green groups criticized the outcome for failing to urge increased ambitions on emissions cuts sufficiently to curb rising temperatures. Poorer nations vulnerable to climate change also wanted more clarity on how an already agreed $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 will be provided and on efforts to build on that amount further from the end of the decade.
A statement by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who left the talks on Thursday, stressed the need for more work.
"From now on, my five priorities will be: ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition and ambition," it said.
"And ambition must guide all member states as they prepare their (emissions cut plans) for 2020 to reverse the present trend in which climate change is still running faster than us."
A U.N.-commissioned report by the IPCC in October warned that keeping the Earth's temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C would need "unprecedented changes" in every aspect of society.
Last week, Saudi Arabia, the Unites States, Russia and Kuwait refused to use the word "welcome" in association with the findings of the report.
The decision text now merely expresses gratitude for the work on the report, welcomes its timely completion and invites parties to use the information in it.
For many low-lying states and islands at risk from rising sea levels, this is not strong enough but had to be accepted grudgingly in exchange for other trade-offs.
During the two weeks of talks in Katowice - in the mining region of Silesia, a focus on the fossil fuel industry provided an unwelcome distraction for some countries and environmental groups which want to focus on cleaner energy.
The conference itself has been hosted by coal-reliant Poland, which has sought to protect its mining industry. The U.S. administration’s only event in Katowice was seen as trying to rebrand coal as a potentially clean energy source.
(Editing by Ros Russell, Alexandra Hudson and Jonathan Oatis)
Climate change: COP24 deal to bring Paris pact to life
Matt McGrath BBC 16 Dec 18;
Negotiators in Poland have finally secured agreement on a range of measures that will make the Paris climate pact operational in 2020.
Last-minute rows over carbon markets threatened to derail the meeting - and delayed it by a day.
Delegates believe the new rules will ensure that countries keep their promises to cut carbon.
The Katowice agreement aims to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below 2C.
"Putting together the Paris agreement work programme is a big responsibility," said the chairman of the talks, known as COP24, Michal Kurtyka.
"It has been a long road. We did our best to leave no-one behind."
The common rulebook envisages flexibility for poorer nations.
Developing countries seek recognition and compensation for the impact of rising temperatures.
The idea of being legally liable for causing climate change has long been rejected by richer nations, who fear huge bills well into the future.
Last weekend, scientists and delegates were shocked when the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected to the meeting "welcoming" a recent UN report on keeping global temperature rise to within the 1.5C limit.
The report said the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century.
Keeping to the preferred goal would need "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".
What did the delegates focus on?
Representatives from 196 states took part in the talks. They were trying to sort out some very tricky questions about the rulebook of the Paris agreement.
These are the regulations that will govern the nuts and bolts of how countries cut carbon, provide finance to poorer nations and ensure that everyone is doing what they say they are doing.
It sounds easy but is very technical. Countries often have different definitions and timetables for their carbon cutting actions.
Poorer countries want some "flexibility" in the rules so that they are not overwhelmed with regulations that they don't have the capacity to put into practice.
Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris agreement, and now with the European Climate Foundation, said the agreement was a big boost for the Paris pact.
"The key piece was having a good transparency system because it builds trust between countries and because we can measure what is being done and it is precise enough," she told BBC News on the sidelines of this meeting.
"I am happy with that. Nobody can say that's not clear, we don't know what to do, or that it's not true anymore. It's very clear,"
She said that countries like Russia which had refused to ratify the Paris agreement because it wasn't sure about the rules, could no longer use that excuse.
However some observers say the deal is not sufficiently strong to deal with the urgency of the climate problem.
In the words of one delegate, "it's what's possible, but not what's necessary".
What about cutting carbon faster?
There has been a big push for countries to up their ambition, to cut carbon deeper and with greater urgency.
Many delegates want to see a rapid increase in ambition before 2020 to keep the chances of staying under 1.5C alive.
Right now, the plans that countries lodged as part of the Paris agreement don't get anywhere near that, described as "grossly insufficient" by one delegate from a climate vulnerable country.
Business is also looking for a signal from this meeting about the future.
"Companies are ready to invest and banks are ready to finance," said Carlos Salle from Spanish energy conglomerate, Iberdrola.
"So we need that greater ambition in the policy to enable business to move further and faster."
UN climate accord 'inadequate' and lacks urgency, experts warn
Agreement will fail to halt devastating rise in global temperature, say scientists
Fiona Harvey The Guardian 16 Aug 18;
The world has been put on notice that its best efforts so far will fail to halt the devastation of climate change, as countries came to a partial agreement at UN talks that failed to match up to the challenges faced.
Leading figures in climate science and economics said much more must be done, and quickly, to stave off the prospect of dangerous levels of global warming.
Nicholas Stern, the former World Bank chief economist and author of a seminal review of the economics of climate change, said: “It is clear that the progress we are making is inadequate, given the scale and urgency of the risks we face. The latest figures show carbon dioxide emissions are still rising. A much more attractive, clean and efficient path for economic development and poverty reduction is in our hands.”
Johan Rockstrom, director designate at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: “My biggest concern is that the UN talks failed to align ambitions with science. We continue to follow a path that will take us to a very dangerous 3-4C warmer world within this century. Extreme weather events hit people across the planet already, at only 1C of warming.”
The two-week-long UN talks in Poland ended with clarity over the “rulebook” that will govern how the Paris agreement of 2015 is put into action, but the crucial question of how to lift governments’ targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was left unanswered.
Countries will meet again next year. The annual climate talks have been going on since 1992 when the UN framework convention on climate change was signed, binding governments to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. That agreement followed years of scientific predictions on global warming, culminating in a landmark report in 1988 that warned of the dangers.
Since then, the warnings have grown clearer and scientists have eliminated the possibility that the global warming observed in recent decades has been due to natural forces. It is a manmade problem arising from the use of fossil fuels, which has poured the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
On current national emissions-cutting targets, the world would reach more than 3C of warming, scientists say. Two months ago the world’s leading body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found that even 1.5C of warming would cause sea level rises, coral reef die-off, extinction of species and droughts, floods, storms and heatwaves that would threaten the world’s stability.
Levels of warming greater than that would devastate parts of the globe, wiping out agricultural productivity, melting the Arctic ice cap and rendering many areas uninhabitable.
Some businesses called on governments to act. Stephanie Pfeifer, chief executive of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which represents investors with more than $21tn (£16.7tn) in funds, said: “It is vital that the world’s governments recognise the serious challenge posed by climate change and urgently scale up their efforts, both at a national level and globally. It is only through signals such as these that investors will have the confidence necessary to allocate the required capital to the low-carbon and climate-resilient transition.”
Next year’s negotiations, in Chile, are likely to focus on narrow technical issues. But the 2020 conference, which may be held in the UK or Italy, will be the biggest since the landmark Paris agreement of 2015. There, countries will have to come up with plans for cutting emissions drastically in order to avert a climate crisis that scientists say will cause greater economic, social and natural disruption than anything in humanity’s history.
