COP28 in shadow of four big forgotten pledges
COP28 Dubai
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, December 2: The COP28 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is now being largely seen as a talking shop of the heads of the states amid unfulfilled promises looks failing to appeal to the people. The 13 days long conference of the parties (COP28) has begun on usual way with heads of the states making big claims to combat climate change.
The United Nations came out with an assessment report on climate change mitigation efforts. It was revealed that the world will be missing the target to keep the rise of the global average temperature to two degree centigrade and even aim at reducing it to 1.5 degree centigrade by 2020. Worse, said the UN, the global average temperature will rise by 2.9 degree centigrade by 2100.
On the sidelines of big announcements in several of the COP meetings, three big pledges were made by a number of countries to accelerate efforts to reduce the factors contributing to the global warming. Reports suggest that these pledges remain on paper only.
The first of the top pledge was made to reduce global methane emissions. This was announced at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021. The US and EU and 100 countries committed to cut methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. China, Russia, and India have not taken part in this pledge. India is the fourth largest contributor of methane emissions behind China, US, and Russia.
Experts claim that methane is responsible for around 30 per cent of human-caused global warming since the industrial revolution. Agriculture and municipal waste largely contribute to methane emission.
The people in Delhi can be familiar with the intensity of methane-induced global warming. The landfill sites on Delhi’s borders majorly produce methane gases which spread over to the skylines of adjoining cities such as Noida, Ghaziabad, and Sonipat.
The COP28 in Dubai is claiming to have the agenda to cut methane emissions on the top. Several other countries such as China, Latina America, Africa, the US and others also have done little to reduce methane emissions. World Bank is likely to announce a fund during COP28 with the support of oil companies to finance methane emission mitigation efforts globally.
Developed countries had faced the anger of climate change affected nations at COP27 which was held in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt last year. Pakistan, Maldives and others had held the declaration until the developed world committed to fulfil the 100 billions dollars of annual finance for mitigation efforts. Even after one year, the major outcome of the last year’s pledge has seen little on the ground.
Another pledge made during COP26 to stop financing international fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022. Campaign group Oil Change International (OCI) has estimated that partial success has been seen with countries allocating about 5.7 billion dollars from fossil fuel to clean energy projects.
Former diplomat Mohan Kumar wrote in a blog that “China’s ability to ramp up coal use in recent months is the result of a huge national campaign over the past two years to expand coal mines and build more coal-fired power plants”. He said that “even the US gets 60 per cent of its energy from Coal and Natural Gas. And the idea repeated in successive COP meetings that all fossil fuels must abate is becoming more and more of a chimera. China continues to burn more coal than the entire world put together and its green house gas emissions exceed that of the entire developed world”.
The Glasgow COP26 had also issued a pledge which was supported by over 140 countries to stop deforestation by 2030. The pledge had also committed 19 billion dollars of funding commitments. But Al Arabia in a report said that “deforestation in 2022 alone increased by four per cent worldwide, according to a coalition of environmental organizations including WWF, The Rainforest Alliance and Climate Focus”.
The Al Arabia quoted Erin Matson of Climate Focus, saying that “this pledge definitely is not showing signs right now that it will succeed”. Global Forest Watch has said that India from 2000 to 2022 lost 5.6 per cent of the tree covers. This trend is also seen in countries such as China, Latin America, and other Asian nations.
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