12 Thursday November 11 2021 | the times
News
Oliver Wright Policy Editor
Ben Webster Environment Editor
Boris Johnson has admonished world
leaders who were standing in the way of
an ambitious climate change agree-
ment in Glasgow as he admitted that
the success of the conference now
hangs “in the balance”.
After a visit to the Cop26 summit, the
prime minister said it was “frustrating”
W
ith no prospect of
squeezing any more
emissions pledges
from big economies
before Cop26 ends
this weekend, the best deal that can
be hoped for is one that ensures they
submit stronger targets as soon as
possible afterwards (Ben Webster
writes).
That is the aim of the key
paragraph in the draft text published
yesterday by the UK presidency. It
“urges” countries to “revisit and
strengthen” their targets for 2030 by
the end of next year to ensure they
are aligned with the “temperature
goal” of the Paris agreement.
If that language survives in the
final text, Boris Johnson will claim
that he has achieved his goal for
Cop26 of “keeping alive” the
prospect of limiting global warming
to 1.5C.
Green groups and some scientists
have criticised the weakness of the
verb in that paragraph, saying that
“urges” should be replaced by a
stronger word such as “commits”.
UK negotiators believe that
“urges” is the strongest term likelyFaltering steps
Analysis
News Cop
Johnson criticises world leaders
to see countries “conspicuously patting
themselves on the back” for having
signed up to the Paris climate deal
without following through on those
commitments in Glasgow. He called
on world leaders to contact their
negotiating teams to urge them to be
flexible but admitted that any agree-
ment was “not going to fix” climate
change in one go.
“I say to my fellow leaders you cannot
now sit on your hands as the world asks
you to act because the world knows
what a mess our planet is in,” he said.
“The world will find it absolutelyincomprehensible if we fail to deliver
and the backlash from people will be
immense and it will be long lasting.”
Johnson made his comments after the
UK delegation published the first draft
of a potential deal that noted “with seri-
ous concern” the existing targets collec-
tively fall far short of the emissions re-
ductions needed to limit global warming
to 1.5C, as countries agreed to try to do
under the 2015 Paris agreement.
The draft asks countries to “revisit
and strengthen the 2030 targets in their
nationally determined contributions,
to align with the Paris agreement tem-perature goal by the end of 2022”. It pro-
poses another world leaders’ summit in
2023 “to consider ambition [on emis-
sions reductions] to 2030”.
It also calls on countries “to acceler-
ate the phasing-out of coal and subsi-
dies for fossil fuels”. That will please
developing countries most vulnerable
to climate change and those such as
Britain that have set deadlines for
phasing out coal. However, it may be
resisted by countries still heavily de-
pendent on coal such as China, India
and Russia.
The text also calls for developed
countries to “at least double” the
amount of public and private money
provided annually to help developing
countries adapt to climate change.
The Alliance of Small Island States,
which includes countries such as the
Maldives and Tuvalu that face inunda-
tion from rising seas, said the text was “a
basis for moving forward” but needed
stronger language on climate aid for the
most vulnerable countries. It also called
for separate funding to cover the “loss
and damage” caused by climate change.
The US has strongly resisted any sug-
gestion that developed countries
should pay compensation for the im-
pact of emissions on poorer nations.
Johnson said it would be finance that
could “unlock” the negotiations in a
clear message to richer countries to do
more to support developing countries
with climate change adaptation and
mitigation. “As you look at the final
period of this negotiation, there’s no
doubt at all that finance is the great sol-
vent that matters,” he said. “It’s finance
that can unlock this.”
He admitted that even an ambitious
deal would not “fix” climate change in
one go and that the best that could be
hoped for was to agree on a “road map
for further commitments”.
Negotiators from almost 200 coun-
tries will now debate the text line by line
until they can agree by consensus on a
final version. The negotiations are
scheduled to end on Friday but are
likely to drag on into the weekend.
The text “expresses alarm and con-
cern” that human activities have
caused about 1.1C of warming to date. It
notes that “impacts are already being
felt in every region” and says the
amount of carbon that can be released
globally without breaching the Paris
agreement temperature goal “is being
rapidly depleted”.
An analysis of all pledges made by
countries to date for emission cuts this
decade found they put the world on
track for at least 2.7C of warming. Under
the Paris agreement, countries agreed to
limit warming to “well below” 2C and to
“pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5C.
The draft text refers to the finding by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-
mate Change that limiting global
warming to 1.5C requires reducing
global carbon dioxide emissions by
45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010
level and to net zero around mid-centu-
ry. It notes that under the targets for-
mally submitted to the UN, emissions
would be 13.7 per cent higher than 2010
in 2030.
Bob Ward of the Grantham Research
Institute on Climate Change at the
London School of Economics said: “We
need countries to agree to return every
one or two years with more ambitious
pledges. We also need stronger evi-
dence of action to deliver the pledges.”
Laurence Wainwright, a sustainabil-
ity lecturer at the University of Oxford,
said the draft text was “bold” but “short
on details” in parts.
Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat
leader, said: “I fear this is more about
kicking the can down the road after a
disappointing conference.”
How I save the planet, Deborah Ross, TFashion statement Students from the