New Delhi: As the 25th edition of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties or COP 25 gets underway in Madrid, Spain, the mood about climate change is more gloomy than usual.
UN Secretary General António Guterres set the template by issuing a pre-meeting statement, in which he said that the “point of no return was no longer over the horizon”.
“By the end of the coming decade we will be on one of two paths, one of which is sleepwalking past the point of no return,” said the UN Secretary General during his opening address.
For the next two weeks, several stakeholders will hold discussions about the path forward. Countries will discuss their revised emission targets that they have committed to submit at the 2020 summit in Glasgow.
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2015 Paris deal
The 2015 Paris deal, which set the largest and most ambitious emission targets till date, was hailed at the time.
The 2015 summit saw 195 countries commit to the agreement. The main pledges included keeping world temperatures “well below” 2C, and ideally 1.5C – above-pre-industrial times, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and review each country’s emission targets every five years.
The climate change tipping point
But the climate change crisis has become starker since 2015. The UN itself claims that the 2015 deal addresses only one-third of the total emissions.
According to some scientists, some parts of the earth are reaching a tipping point with respect to climate change.
“In practice, a tipping point is a threshold beyond which a small tweak can have abrupt irreversible effects. Some components of the world’s climate, the researchers suggest, seem closer to the brink than others,” writes Anjana Ahuja, a science commentator at the Financial Times.
Research suggests that both the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic Sea ice might be reaching a tipping point.
“Both phenomena might already be feeding instability into the system, by pushing more water into the North Atlantic and slowing down the conveyor belt. In turn, a sluggish circulation might, by interfering with the west African monsoon, trigger a drought in the Sahel region of Africa,” adds Ahuja. “Subsequent knock-on effects include a warmer Southern Ocean, which could accelerate ice loss in Antarctica.”
What is expected to happen at the COP25?
Over the past year there have been several substantial climate change protests. In this backdrop, different stakeholders are holding discussions at Madrid.
“Next year’s targets are what’s expected to be discussed at this year’s COP25 in Madrid.The 2020 summit will be held in Glasgow and countries have committed to submit new and updated national climate action plans,” notes a report in the BBC.
“In the crucial 12 months ahead, it is essential that we secure more ambitious national commitments — particularly from the main emitters — to immediately start reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a pace consistent to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050,” said the UN secretary general before the meeting started.
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