New Delhi: The US special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, has called on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties 28 (COP28) to hold accountable those nations who have failed to deliver on promises made to fight the global climate crisis.
“We know from the IEA [International Energy Agency] that if all the promises of Glasgow [COP26] were fulfilled and all the promises of Sharm el-Sheikh [COP27] were fulfilled, you could be, by 2050, at either 1.8°C or 1.7°C of warming on the planet. It shows that with this effort, things could be within grasp, though not completely, for the simple reason that not everybody is doing what they promised to do,” Kerry said Wednesday during a digital press briefing hosted by the Dubai Regional Media Hub of the US department of state.
He added: “Needless to say that is a problem and we need to have accountability at this COP for that lack of follow-through by some.”
The conference of parties has been held annually since the UNFCCC was signed at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and 196 countries will be participating in this year’s conference, starting Thursday in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
COP3 at Kyoto and COP21 at Paris have been two of the most significant conferences.
COP3 led to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol that established legally binding emission reduction targets for the high-income countries. COP21 led to the Paris Agreement which set the goal of limiting global warming below the 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
Scientists have warned that global warming beyond the 2°C limit will have catastrophic effects.
Kerry Wednesday also spoke about what would be US’s focus at COP 28 and the US-China cooperation on methane emissions.
Loss and Damages fund
Kerry highlighted that the US will be focused on “securing strong outcomes” on three major “mandated negotiated issues” that are part of COP28, among them the global stocktake of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement commitments and the operationalisation of the ‘Loss and Damages’ fund.
The ‘Loss and Damages’ fund was created at COP27 to provide critical financial assistance to nations most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, as reported by ThePrint earlier.
A transitional committee was set up after COP27 on establishing the framework for the operationalisation of the fund before this year’s COP. Kerry made it clear that the US supports the consensus arrived at by the transitional committee in the operationalisation of this fund.
“The United States fully supports the consensus that was reached by the transitional committee which we served on and it was reached earlier this month on recommending how you operationalise the funding arrangements for this fund,” Kerry said.
He added: “We think that this fund… will meet the needs of vulnerable countries. We worked hard with our partners to propose ways in which this fund can be stood up quickly but confidently by using the World Bank as the repository initially.”
US-China cooperation on methane
One of the key areas of cooperation that Kerry sees during COP28 is between the US and China on methane — a message he emphasised on during the press briefing.
“This year we will be adding a very important contribution with respect to methane, which will involve both oil and gas companies as well as countries as well as a special effort by China and the US which we agreed to in Sunnylands [California] that we would join together in a summit at this COP on the methane issue,” Kerry said.
“Methane is responsible for 50 percent of the global warming that has taken place, the global heating…it is far more damaging, far more destructive than carbon dioxide…We also think it is the easiest, quickest, fastest and cheapest way to begin to get gains against the warming. There will be a major focus on methane. ” he added.
Kerry met with the Chinese special envoy for climate change, Xie Zhenhua, twice this year — in Beijing in July and in Sunnylands, California, in November — and following these meetings, released the ‘Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis’.
The two countries agreed to host a summit along with the UAE on methane and non-CO2 greenhouse gases at COP28.
For India — the second largest global emitter of methane, according to the IEA — the issue is tricky, as India has declined signing the Global Methane Pledge at the previous two COPs, citing measures taken to reduce methane emission. It has also said that methane emissions are “survival” emissions for the country, unlike in the West, where they’re “luxury” emissions.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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