On December 15, the 25th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP-25) concluded its work in Madrid. There were high expectations for the conference, with representatives from almost every country in the world, 15 EU countries were represented by prime ministers, and two countries were represented by presidents.
At the conference it was supposed to agree on the rules of the new economic mechanism of the Paris Agreement, to solve the issue of financing the mechanism of payment for losses from irreversible climate change (“Losses and Damage”), to take increased specific obligations on greenhouse gas emissions.
At the previous conference in Katowice, it was declared that to achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement to keep the global average temperature rise within 1.5 °С, it is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 47% and by the middle of the 21st century to reduce their quantity to zero, as well as to carry out “decarbonization” of the key sectors of the economy: energy, industry, construction and transport.
As UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the conference, despite some positive signs from some representatives of big business and financial institutions toward a green economy, these steps are not enough. “What is needed today is not incremental steps, but revolutionary transformations,” he stressed. But even responsible companies are being hampered by governments, including the “perverse practice of subsidizing fossil energy,” clearly aimed at undermining the decisions of the Paris Agreement. The secretary general called on all governments to follow the lead of the 65 countries that pledged in 2020 to present strategies to achieve zero emissions in 2050. The most important task is to make coal a thing of the past and stop building coal-fired power plants, as well as to stop fossil fuel extraction and accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources.
And yet, the international community, as the secretary general emphasized, missed the opportunity to demonstrate a willingness to take action on climate change mitigation, adaptation to its effects, and financial support for developing countries. At the conference, states were expected to make increased commitments to reduce greenhouse gases in amounts that would meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius, but this did not happen. Due to serious disagreements between countries, the Conference participants could not reach unanimity on specific measures to implement Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which was the most important task of the conference in Madrid. The conference was unanimous on only one point: the conference did not live up to expectations and its results were virtually nil.
The conference did not agree on the rules of the new economic mechanism of the Paris Agreement, which would have allowed the trading of quotas, would have ensured the implementation of investment projects to reduce emissions. This was mainly due to the desire of large countries such as Brazil, China and Australia to transfer unused quotas from the period of the Kyoto Protocol.
The issue of increasing payments for losses due to climate change was also not resolved, because there was simply no source of financing for it.
Almost all participants of the conference foaming at the mouth about the need to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible by 2030, because droughts, storms, floods, the ocean will flood half of the land, but in fact, large countries hid their heads in the sand and did not announce new goals (“ambitions”) to reduce emissions. Only 84 countries have announced increases in their emission reduction goals, but overall, they are responsible for only a little over 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not among them are China, India, Russia and Japan, which are the leaders in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. And the United States, which ranks second in emissions, is known to have withdrawn from the Paris Agreement altogether. According to experts, the obligations assumed by these 84 countries will allow avoiding an increase in the temperature on the planet by 4-5 degrees. And this is exactly the course of events that we should be prepared for, unless the already obsolete provisions of the Paris Agreement are amended.
It was decided to postpone all these issues on the implementation of the Paris Agreement for discussion at the next climate conference in December 2020 in Glasgow.