200 nations accepted a climate compromise on Sunday, which came under criticisms for "watering down crucial language about coal" after contentions pushed by countries like India and China, reported Financial Times. What irked a lot of climate change watchers was the last-minute decision to amend provisions that called for "phasing out" coal and certain fossil fuels, in favour of "phasing them down", a crucial difference pushed for mainly by countries like India.
The deal calls for an eventual end of some coal power and of fossil fuel subsidies. It also includes enough financial incentives to almost satisfy poorer nations that anticipate harms from climate change out of proportion with their roles in causing it. Most importantly, negotiators said, it preserves, albeit barely, the overarching goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees celsius since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees celsius.
Ahead of the talks in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Nations had set three criteria for success, and none of them was achieved. The UN's criteria included pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030, $100 billion in financial aid from rich nations to poor, and ensuring that half of that money went to helping the developing world adapt to the worst effects of climate change. The draft agreement says big carbon polluting nations have to come back and submit stronger emission cutting pledges by the end of 2022.
Contentions against phasing out coal?
Multiple reasons. Some of them are very practical. Developing countries are evolving at an exponential rate and it needs a cheap, plentiful power source like coal to keep ahead of its growing demand. Indian Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav had lashed out at calls for "phasing out coal", he had said that the world needed to awaken to the fact that climate change had been caused by unsustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns in rich countries. Noting that fossil fuels had enabled parts of the world to reach high levels of wealth and well-being, he asked how any developing nation could agree on making pledges to phase out coal and fossil fuel.
And, Yadav has a point. In terms of brute numbers, China, followed by India and the US, are the biggest coal polluters; coal itself being the biggest polluter (at around 21 per cent of all fossil fuels). However, per capita, countries Australia and South Korea are far ahead of China and India in that metric.
Coal as a political issue
Coal has been a contentious political issue at the COP-26. A draft proposal from the meeting's chair released Friday calls on countries to accelerate the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels, a wording that was amended from the previous calls on countries to "phase out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuel".
This was the first suggested shift away from unconditional demands that some fossil fuel exporting nations have objected to. The question of how to address the continued use of fossil fuels responsible for much of global warming has been one of the key sticking points at the two-week talks. Scientists agree it is necessary to end their use as soon as possible to meet the 2015 Paris accord's ambitious goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees celsius. But explicitly including such a call in the overarching declaration is politically sensitive, including for countries, such as Saudi Arabia, that fear oil and gas may be targeted next.
Another crunch issue is the question of financial aid for poor countries to cope with climate change. Rich nations failed to provide them with $100 billion annually by 2020, as agreed, causing considerable anger among developing countries going into the talks. The latest draft reflects those concerns, expressing deep regret that the $100 billion goal hasn't been met and urging rich countries to scale up their funding.
According to the proposed decision, countries plan to express alarm and utmost concern that human activities have already caused around 1.1C (2F) of global warming and that impacts are already being felt in every region. While the Paris accord calls for limiting temperature to well below 2C (3.6F), ideally no more than 1.5C, by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, the draft agreement notes that the lower threshold would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change and resolves to aim for that target. In doing so, it calls for the world to cut carbon dioxide emission by 45 per cent in 2030 compared with 2010 levels, and to add no additional CO2 to the atmosphere by mid-century.
-Representational image
