by DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — When the United Nations climate talks conclude sometime this week in Dubai, big promises will likely be made about how the world will combat climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil. , gas and coal.
Negotiators are debating how quickly fossil fuels should be phased out and how a major transition to green energy would be paid for, raising the possibility of a landmark deal.
Previous summits have ended with funds established to help developing countries transition to green energy, promises to reduce pollution and promises to keep the most vulnerable people at the center of policy discussions.
But have countries kept their word?
Before making any decisions emerging from this year’s negotiations, here’s a look at five big promises from nearly 30 years of talks and what’s happened since.
EMISSIONS CUTS IN KYOTO
The third climate summit took place in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, one of the warmest years on record in the 20th century.
Known as the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement called on 41 high-emitting countries around the world and the European Union to reduce their emissions by just over 5% compared to 1990 levels. Emissions cuts can come from many places , from implementing green energies like wind and solar that produce no emissions to making things that do, like fuel-powered vehicles, run cleaner.
Despite the agreement to reduce emissions, it was not until 2005 that countries finally agreed to act on the Kyoto Protocol. The United States and China (the two largest emitters then and now) did not sign the agreement.
In terms of fulfilling the promises made, Kyoto was not successful. Emissions have increased dramatically since then. At the time, 1997 was the hottest year on record since pre-industrial times. 1998 broke that record, as has more than a dozen years since.
But Kyota is still considered a historic moment in the fight against climate change because it was the first time so many countries recognized the problem and committed to acting on it.
COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CASH
At the time of the 2009 conference in Denmark, the world was culminating its warmest decade on record, which has since been surpassed.
The summit is widely seen as a failure in the impasse between developed and developing countries over cutting emissions and whether poorer nations could use fossil fuels to grow their economies. Still, he saw important promise: money for countries to transition to clean energy.
Rich countries promised to channel $100 billion a year to developing countries for green technologies by 2020. But they fell short of $100 billion in the early 2020s, drawing criticism from both developing states and the environmentalists.
In 2022, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said rich countries could finally have met and even surpassed the $100 billion target. But Oxfam, a group focused on anti-poverty efforts, said it is likely that 70% of the funds were in the form of loans that actually increased the debt crisis in developing countries.
And as climate change worsens, experts say the promised funds are not enough. Research published by climate economist Nicholas Stern found that developing countries will likely need $2 trillion for climate action each year by 2030.
THE PARIS AGREEMENT
It wasn’t until 2015 that nearly 200 nations adopted a global pact to combat climate change, which called on the world to collectively reduce greenhouse gases. But they decided it would not be binding, so countries that did not comply could not be sanctioned.
The Paris Agreement is widely considered the United Nations’ greatest achievement in efforts to confront climate change. It was agreed exactly eight years ago, on December 12, to a standing ovation in plenary. Nations agreed to keep warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
The legacy of Paris continues, and the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees remains central to climate debates. Scientists agree that it is necessary to maintain the threshold of 1.5 because every tenth of a degree of warming brings even more disastrous consequences, in the form of extreme weather events, for an already hot planet. The world has not exceeded the limit set in the Paris agreement (it has warmed about 1.1 or 1.2 degrees Celsius (2 to 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the beginning of the 19th century), but is currently on track to achieve it, unless drastic cuts in emissions are made. quickly.
GLASGOW AND COAL
Six years after Paris, global warming had reached such a critical point that negotiators were seeking to recommit to the goal of limiting warming to the levels agreed in 2015.
Average temperatures were already 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than in pre-industrial times.
The Glasgow summit was postponed until 2021 as the world was emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. It included mass protests led by climate activist Greta Thunberg, who helped lead a global movement of young activists to demand more action from leaders.
After last-minute disagreements over the language of the final document, countries agreed to a “phase out” of coal, less strong than the original idea of a “phase out.” India and China, two emerging economies that rely heavily on coal, pushed to soften the language.
Burning coal is responsible for more emissions than any other fossil fuel, about 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The burning of oil and gas are also important sources of emissions.
So far, countries have failed to comply with the Glasgow agreement. Emissions from coal have increased slightly and the major countries that use it have not yet begun to abandon dirtier fossil fuels.
India is a good example. It relies on coal for more than 70% of power generation and plans a major expansion of coal-fired power generation capacity over the next 16 months.
LOSS AND DAMAGE IN SHARM EL-SHEIKH
At last year’s climate talks in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, countries agreed for the first time to create a fund to help poorer nations recover from the impacts of climate change.
A few months after the devastating floods in Pakistan that killed almost 2,000 people and caused losses of more than $3.2 trillion, COP27 delegates decided to create a loss and damage fund to help and loss of income from crops damaged by climate change offset.
After disagreements over what the fund should look like, the fund was formally created on the first day of this year’s talks in Dubai. More than $700 million has already been pledged. The pledges (and the amounts that countries choose to commit) are voluntary.
Climate experts say the pledges are just a fraction of the billions of dollars needed as climate-driven extreme weather events such as cyclones, sea level rise, floods and droughts increase as climate change increases. the temperatures. ___
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series produced under the India Climate Journalism Programme, a collaboration between The Associated Press, the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and the Press Trust of India.
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