Hi John,
Today we’ve seen the first draft of the COP26 agreement and it’s a long way short of what’s required for climate justice.
Can you email the UK government now and demand they push the rich world to pay up on climate finance in the final agreement?
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On emissions cuts, the pledges so far add up to 2.4C of warming – a calamitous prospect particularly for the most affected peoples and areas on the front line of the climate emergency. Even if long-term targets begin to be met in the next crucial decade, the best we can currently achieve is 1.8C. This is still well short of the 1.5C ‘safe limit’ agreed at Paris, above which the impacts are catastrophic.
On climate finance – which is absolutely crucial for enabling countries in the global south to go green without immediately sacrificing their people, as well as deal with the impacts of what is already happening – it is even more disappointing. The already insufficient $100 billion annual target for climate finance, promised for 2020, will not be met until 2023.
We must stand in solidarity with negotiators who are now calling for new climate finance targets of at least $700 billion per year for the next period from 2025, including increased finance for climate adaptation and compensation for loss and damage.
As hosts of COP26, the UK can and must push rich country governments to go further in the remaining days of this summit. The UK itself must go further. The rich world needs to show it is willing to pay for the costs that its historical emissions have inflicted on the global south. It’s a form of reparations for the harm that we’ve caused.
Can you send an urgent email to Alok Sharma, the UK president of COP26, now?
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The central problem of climate politics is that rich industrialised nations, egged on by fossil fuel interests, have spent two decades not keeping their promises to act first and fastest to cut emissions. Now they blame others for our collective peril.
At the heart of the problem is a global economy that is addicted to extracting fossil fuels. From transnational corporations profiting from burning oil, coal and gas, to financial institutions profiting from paying for them to do it, the vested interests looking to delay progress are substantial. There is no doubt the fossil fuel lobby will be trying to persuade Alok Sharma to settle for less in the coming days.
But as we saw last weekend, the global climate justice movement is an increasingly determined match for them. As climate action becomes more and more mainstream in every country, huge numbers of us around the world have our eyes fixed on what’s happening in Glasgow. Now is the time to raise our voices to demand the best possible outcome from this summit in the remaining days.
Rich governments found trillions of dollars in a matter of months to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. There is no question they can provide the necessary finance to unlock these negotiations, if they feel under pressure to do so. That’s our task in the coming days.
Please tell Alok Sharma to push for an ambitious climate finance target at COP26 now.
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Of course, climate finance is only part of the solution. To transform the global economy to tackle the climate emergency, we also need to deal with the global debt crisis sparked by the pandemic. And we need to dismantle the parallel global structures which are pushing us towards climate disaster – from corporate courts allowing the fossil fuel industry to sue governments for taking climate action, to intellectual property rules which prevent the spread of essential green technology, just as they have done with vaccines in the pandemic.
These are all ongoing struggles, and our work on these will continue whatever happens in the next few days. But finance is what could make a difference right now, and set the next phase of negotiations on a path closer to where they need to go.
Thank you for everything you do,
Daniel Willis
Climate campaigner, Global Justice Now
PS. You can read my detailed take on what’s happened at COP26 so far over on our blog.
Notes
1. Draft deal calls for stronger carbon cutting targets by end of 2022, BBC News, 10 November 2021
2. World on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report, Guardian, 9 November 2021
3. African nations seek talks on $700bn climate finance deal, Guardian, 8 November 2021
4. Hundreds of fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber any country’s delegation at climate summit, Independent, 9 November 2021
5. COP26: A history of broken promises and shifting goalposts, Meena Raman, 16 October 2021
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