Help needed to aid sacrifices by developing nations, summit told
For many people in developing nations, actions taken by the world community against climate change now and in the future mean the difference between livelihood and sacrifice, and possibly between survival and perishing. The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP 26, being held in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct 31 to Nov 12, has heard that developing countries, which have set ambitious goals at the gathering, are prepared to make sacrifices, but they cannot succeed without help from rich nations. Experts said the leaders of many countries have pointed out that the developing world urgently needs from advanced economies the funding and technology for alternative lifestyles, clean and renewable energy, pollution-free transportation, and industrial development, among other assistance. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed that commitment to $100 billion in climate finance support annually for developing nations needs to become a reality. "Those suffering the most－Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States－need urgent funding, more public climate finance, more overseas development aid, more grants and easier access to funding," he said. Developed countries pledged at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009 to collectively mobilize $100 billion annually to provide financial support to help developing nations tackle climate change. However, they failed to meet that promise, and will only reach the target in 2023－three years late－according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Anjal Prakash, research director at the Indian School of Business"" Bharti Institute of Public Policy, said, "The $100 billion pledge that has long been seen as a minimum for climate finance must increase over time." Addressing COP 26 on Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi not only urged developed nations to fulfill their promises, but also said, "India expects developed countries to provide climate financing of $1 trillion at the earliest." Prakash said, "India""s demand is now based on the historical failure in delivering the $100 billion in 2020." In a summit statement issued on Oct 26, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations urged advanced economies to "fulfill their commitment of mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 through 2025 to support the implementation of mitigation and adaptation actions of developing countries". Similar appeals were voiced by a number of state leaders. Modi said the transfer of climate financing and low-cost climate technologies has become more important. "It is necessary that as we track the progress made in climate mitigation, we should also track climate finance," he said. A total of 78 out of 213 countries and regions have per capita carbon emissions above the world average, of which 56 are advanced economies, according to a report from the UN""s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. Referring in particular to the United States, Modi called for pressure to be placed on those countries that have fulfilled only a small part of the pledge, but failed in the main to deliver on their promise to provide climate financing. Game changer Prakash said India has called for technology transfer and adaptation financing for those countries that have not contributed historically to climate change, but are bearing the brunt of it. Speaking at COP 26, Indonesian President Joko Widodo noted that climate financing from developed countries is "a game changer" in developing economies"" mitigation and adaptation efforts. He urged developed economies to contribute more funding and to share technology to help his nation""s efforts to reduce emissions. Widodo said Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia""s biggest economy, "will be able to contribute faster to the world""s net-zero emissions goal", but the key questions are the amount that developed countries contribute and the type of technology transfers they can provide. He said countries such as his, which have large green areas and re-greening potential, and nations that can contribute to carbon sequestration, need support and contributions from developed countries. Speaking at the COP 26 World Leaders Summit in Glasgow on Monday, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said the international community must fully deliver on its financial commitments while setting more ambitious goals after 2025. Although Vietnam is a developing country that has experienced industrialization over the past three decades, he said the nation would capitalize on its advantages in renewable energy and take stronger measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said implementation of developing countries"" commitments to address climate change depends on the amount of support they receive. Developed nations must fulfill their pledges, he said. Government leaders from Libya, Jamaica and Palestine made similar appeals. Kate Nkatha, commercial director of nonprofit organization Fairtrade Africa, said robust financing combined with the uptake of clean technologies is required to strengthen the resilience of Africa""s key sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing. To limit global warming to 1.5 C, a goal indicated in the Paris Agreement of 2015, total climate financing needs to rise by an average of $436 billion annually from last year to 2030, according to a report by five green groups. Surabi Menon, vice-president of ClimateWorks Foundation, one of the groups that worked on the report, said: "Many of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are also the least responsible for the historic emissions that are driving today""s crisis. It is important to support these countries with the financial and technological resources they need in order to equitably address climate change on a global scale." In a report released in August titled "Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis", IPCC discovered that unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 C or even 2 C will be beyond reach. Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, president of the Maldives, told COP 26 on Tuesday that a global average temperature rise beyond 1.5 C constitutes a "death sentence" for small island nations such as his. Similar sentiments were voiced by leaders of other low-lying island states. More than 80 percent of the land area of the Maldives is less than 1 meter above sea level. "Our islands are slowly being eaten by the sea, one by one. If we do not reverse this trend, the Maldives will cease to exist by the end of the century," Solih said. Ecosystems hit According to a UN Environment Programme report released on Oct 26, individual countries"" current pledges will only cut emissions by 7.5 percent by 2030, but a 55 percent reduction is required to meet the Paris goal of maintaining global temperatures below 1.5 C. Judging by the latest pledges, the world could be heading to a temperature rise of 2.7 C this century. Inger Andersen, UNEP executive director, said the climate crisis has taken a toll on ecosystems and livelihoods, and strong measures are needed to reduce carbon emissions and accelerate a green transition. Despite having limited resources compared with developed countries, many developing nations have announced or reaffirmed ambitious climate goals at COP 26. For example, Brazil""s Environment Minister Joaquim Leite said the country would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030, up from the previous 43 percent. Brazil will also work to end illegal deforestation by 2028. South Africa submitted a revised Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, to reduce domestic carbon emissions to within a target range of between 420 million and 350 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030. Indonesia has committed to reduce emissions by 29 percent under a business-as-usual scenario, and by 41 percent with international support, by 2030. The country is also rehabilitating 600,000 hectares of mangrove forests by 2024 and developing its tropical forests into a carbon sink by 2030. A carbon sink is a land or ocean mass that can take in carbon, most notably carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, noting that his country was among the first to submit a revised NDC, said it aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and net-zero emissions by 2065. Gidon Bromberg, director at Ecopeace Middle East, an environmental organization, said that with the climate crisis hitting that region harder than most parts of the world, the response of individual countries is insufficient to meet the challenge. "The Middle East is forecast to receive or to suffer from increased temperatures of between 4 and 7 degrees, and many areas of the region are already extremely hot for the long summer periods. ...Areas outdoors in the Middle East will become increasingly unlivable for extended periods of time," said Bromberg, who is attending the Glasgow conference. According to Modi, India will target net-zero carbon emissions by 2070, although this is two decades behind the COP 26 goal. Prakash said, "India needs to develop and decarbonize, but we will do it at our own pace, as there is a developmental need that India has to fulfill." He added that India has been an active member of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group, which has met twice to strategize the voice of the Global South. "India feels that there should be climate justice, and so industrialized nations that have contributed to much of climate change as we see it today must move to net-zero by 2030," said Prakash, the coordinating lead author of IPCC""s 2019 Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Prakash said the Global North has looked for cheaper options, such as market-based mechanisms for carbon credits, to show progress on net-zero, but refrains from sharing technology. "Most of the money which has been pledged in the name of adaptation finance is via loans, not granted in aid," he added. Main problem John Ross, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, posted on MRonline that the Global South－which refers to less economically developed countries－is being fundamentally discriminated against by advanced countries, in particular the US. These countries are the chief climate change problem due to their far higher per capita carbon emissions than developing nations, Ross said. Furthermore, the policy positions advanced by Washington are a demand that advanced countries, in particular the US, should be given a privileged position in terms of the right to emit far more carbon per person than developing countries. "This is unacceptable from the point of view of justice, democracy, the equality of nations, and even racially," said Ross, a former director of economic and business policy for the mayor of London. Former US vice-president Al Gore, who is an environmentalist, told Xinhua News Agency in Glasgow on Tuesday that political mutual trust between the wealthier and low-income countries is essential for global cooperation on climate change. Gore said every nation, rich or poor, has an important role to play in dealing with climate change, adding that countries that benefited from early industrialization processes have a responsibility to do more in solving the problems resulting from a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Bolivian President Luis Arce said: "The solution to the climate crisis will not be achieved with more green capitalism or more global carbon markets. The solution is civilizational change－to move toward an alternative model to capitalism." Chandran Nair, founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, a think tank based in Hong Kong, said it is unsurprising that climate financing goals have not been met by rich countries, and it is important for emerging nations to adopt a different development model that suits their "capacity and situation". In addition to climate goals, poor developing countries have other tasks to focus on, including economic development and poverty alleviation, Nair said, adding that per capita emissions in many poor countries are extremely low compared with those in rich countries. Xinhua quoted Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as saying there are three main priorities for efforts to tackle climate change. He said the first is for the international community to acknowledge that people living in armed conflicts and in situations affected by climate change are the most vulnerable and need to be given priority. The second is for a collective effort to be made by the international community to focus on genuine and meaningful mitigation measures to reduce carbon emissions and avert the climate crisis. "The third one is really linked to the most vulnerable (populations). They should be top of the list in terms of support, but the fact of the matter today is that they are totally neglected," Mardini said. Whether in Mali, Niger or Afghanistan, countries where the ICRC has a presence, people are struggling with the consequences of climate change, with more frequent floods, drought, desertification, diminishing water tables and hardship, he said. "I think we are reaching a point where collective action needs to be taken by all states today," he added. Jan Yumul in Hong Kong and Xinhua contributed to this report. Contact the writers at kelly@chinadailyapac.com
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY
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For many people in developing nations, actions taken by the world community against climate change now and in the future mean the difference between livelihood and sacrifice, and possibly between survival and perishing. The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP 26, being held in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct 31 to Nov 12, has heard that developing countries, which have set ambitious goals at the gathering, are prepared to make sacrifices, but they cannot succeed without help from rich nations. Experts said the leaders of many countries have pointed out that the developing world urgently needs from advanced economies the funding and technology for alternative lifestyles, clean and renewable energy, pollution-free transportation, and industrial development, among other assistance. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed that commitment to $100 billion in climate finance support annually for developing nations needs to become a reality. "Those suffering the most－Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States－need urgent funding, more public climate finance, more overseas development aid, more grants and easier access to funding," he said. Developed countries pledged at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009 to collectively mobilize $100 billion annually to provide financial support to help developing nations tackle climate change. However, they failed to meet that promise, and will only reach the target in 2023－three years late－according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Anjal Prakash, research director at the Indian School of Business"" Bharti Institute of Public Policy, said, "The $100 billion pledge that has long been seen as a minimum for climate finance must increase over time." Addressing COP 26 on Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi not only urged developed nations to fulfill their promises, but also said, "India expects developed countries to provide climate financing of $1 trillion at the earliest." Prakash said, "India""s demand is now based on the historical failure in delivering the $100 billion in 2020." In a summit statement issued on Oct 26, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations urged advanced economies to "fulfill their commitment of mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 through 2025 to support the implementation of mitigation and adaptation actions of developing countries". Similar appeals were voiced by a number of state leaders. Modi said the transfer of climate financing and low-cost climate technologies has become more important. "It is necessary that as we track the progress made in climate mitigation, we should also track climate finance," he said. A total of 78 out of 213 countries and regions have per capita carbon emissions above the world average, of which 56 are advanced economies, according to a report from the UN""s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. Referring in particular to the United States, Modi called for pressure to be placed on those countries that have fulfilled only a small part of the pledge, but failed in the main to deliver on their promise to provide climate financing. Game changer Prakash said India has called for technology transfer and adaptation financing for those countries that have not contributed historically to climate change, but are bearing the brunt of it. Speaking at COP 26, Indonesian President Joko Widodo noted that climate financing from developed countries is "a game changer" in developing economies"" mitigation and adaptation efforts. He urged developed economies to contribute more funding and to share technology to help his nation""s efforts to reduce emissions. Widodo said Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia""s biggest economy, "will be able to contribute faster to the world""s net-zero emissions goal", but the key questions are the amount that developed countries contribute and the type of technology transfers they can provide. He said countries such as his, which have large green areas and re-greening potential, and nations that can contribute to carbon sequestration, need support and contributions from developed countries. Speaking at the COP 26 World Leaders Summit in Glasgow on Monday, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said the international community must fully deliver on its financial commitments while setting more ambitious goals after 2025. Although Vietnam is a developing country that has experienced industrialization over the past three decades, he said the nation would capitalize on its advantages in renewable energy and take stronger measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said implementation of developing countries"" commitments to address climate change depends on the amount of support they receive. Developed nations must fulfill their pledges, he said. Government leaders from Libya, Jamaica and Palestine made similar appeals. Kate Nkatha, commercial director of nonprofit organization Fairtrade Africa, said robust financing combined with the uptake of clean technologies is required to strengthen the resilience of Africa""s key sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing. To limit global warming to 1.5 C, a goal indicated in the Paris Agreement of 2015, total climate financing needs to rise by an average of $436 billion annually from last year to 2030, according to a report by five green groups. Surabi Menon, vice-president of ClimateWorks Foundation, one of the groups that worked on the report, said: "Many of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are also the least responsible for the historic emissions that are driving today""s crisis. It is important to support these countries with the financial and technological resources they need in order to equitably address climate change on a global scale." In a report released in August titled "Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis", IPCC discovered that unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 C or even 2 C will be beyond reach. Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, president of the Maldives, told COP 26 on Tuesday that a global average temperature rise beyond 1.5 C constitutes a "death sentence" for small island nations such as his. Similar sentiments were voiced by leaders of other low-lying island states. More than 80 percent of the land area of the Maldives is less than 1 meter above sea level. "Our islands are slowly being eaten by the sea, one by one. If we do not reverse this trend, the Maldives will cease to exist by the end of the century," Solih said. Ecosystems hit According to a UN Environment Programme report released on Oct 26, individual countries"" current pledges will only cut emissions by 7.5 percent by 2030, but a 55 percent reduction is required to meet the Paris goal of maintaining global temperatures below 1.5 C. Judging by the latest pledges, the world could be heading to a temperature rise of 2.7 C this century. Inger Andersen, UNEP executive director, said the climate crisis has taken a toll on ecosystems and livelihoods, and strong measures are needed to reduce carbon emissions and accelerate a green transition. Despite having limited resources compared with developed countries, many developing nations have announced or reaffirmed ambitious climate goals at COP 26. For example, Brazil""s Environment Minister Joaquim Leite said the country would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030, up from the previous 43 percent. Brazil will also work to end illegal deforestation by 2028. South Africa submitted a revised Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, to reduce domestic carbon emissions to within a target range of between 420 million and 350 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030. Indonesia has committed to reduce emissions by 29 percent under a business-as-usual scenario, and by 41 percent with international support, by 2030. The country is also rehabilitating 600,000 hectares of mangrove forests by 2024 and developing its tropical forests into a carbon sink by 2030. A carbon sink is a land or ocean mass that can take in carbon, most notably carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, noting that his country was among the first to submit a revised NDC, said it aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and net-zero emissions by 2065. Gidon Bromberg, director at Ecopeace Middle East, an environmental organization, said that with the climate crisis hitting that region harder than most parts of the world, the response of individual countries is insufficient to meet the challenge. "The Middle East is forecast to receive or to suffer from increased temperatures of between 4 and 7 degrees, and many areas of the region are already extremely hot for the long summer periods. ...Areas outdoors in the Middle East will become increasingly unlivable for extended periods of time," said Bromberg, who is attending the Glasgow conference. According to Modi, India will target net-zero carbon emissions by 2070, although this is two decades behind the COP 26 goal. Prakash said, "India needs to develop and decarbonize, but we will do it at our own pace, as there is a developmental need that India has to fulfill." He added that India has been an active member of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group, which has met twice to strategize the voice of the Global South. "India feels that there should be climate justice, and so industrialized nations that have contributed to much of climate change as we see it today must move to net-zero by 2030," said Prakash, the coordinating lead author of IPCC""s 2019 Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Prakash said the Global North has looked for cheaper options, such as market-based mechanisms for carbon credits, to show progress on net-zero, but refrains from sharing technology. "Most of the money which has been pledged in the name of adaptation finance is via loans, not granted in aid," he added. Main problem John Ross, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, posted on MRonline that the Global South－which refers to less economically developed countries－is being fundamentally discriminated against by advanced countries, in particular the US. These countries are the chief climate change problem due to their far higher per capita carbon emissions than developing nations, Ross said. Furthermore, the policy positions advanced by Washington are a demand that advanced countries, in particular the US, should be given a privileged position in terms of the right to emit far more carbon per person than developing countries. "This is unacceptable from the point of view of justice, democracy, the equality of nations, and even racially," said Ross, a former director of economic and business policy for the mayor of London. Former US vice-president Al Gore, who is an environmentalist, told Xinhua News Agency in Glasgow on Tuesday that political mutual trust between the wealthier and low-income countries is essential for global cooperation on climate change. Gore said every nation, rich or poor, has an important role to play in dealing with climate change, adding that countries that benefited from early industrialization processes have a responsibility to do more in solving the problems resulting from a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Bolivian President Luis Arce said: "The solution to the climate crisis will not be achieved with more green capitalism or more global carbon markets. The solution is civilizational change－to move toward an alternative model to capitalism." Chandran Nair, founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, a think tank based in Hong Kong, said it is unsurprising that climate financing goals have not been met by rich countries, and it is important for emerging nations to adopt a different development model that suits their "capacity and situation". In addition to climate goals, poor developing countries have other tasks to focus on, including economic development and poverty alleviation, Nair said, adding that per capita emissions in many poor countries are extremely low compared with those in rich countries. Xinhua quoted Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as saying there are three main priorities for efforts to tackle climate change. He said the first is for the international community to acknowledge that people living in armed conflicts and in situations affected by climate change are the most vulnerable and need to be given priority. The second is for a collective effort to be made by the international community to focus on genuine and meaningful mitigation measures to reduce carbon emissions and avert the climate crisis. "The third one is really linked to the most vulnerable (populations). They should be top of the list in terms of support, but the fact of the matter today is that they are totally neglected," Mardini said. Whether in Mali, Niger or Afghanistan, countries where the ICRC has a presence, people are struggling with the consequences of climate change, with more frequent floods, drought, desertification, diminishing water tables and hardship, he said. "I think we are reaching a point where collective action needs to be taken by all states today," he added. Jan Yumul in Hong Kong and Xinhua contributed to this report. Contact the writers at kelly@chinadailyapac.com
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY
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