Can COP26 lead the way to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions before 2030?

As students of political history know, the best time to bring nations together and agree radical changes to the international order is after a horrific war. From the Peace of Westphalia to the Congress of Vienna, Versailles to Bretton Woods and San Francisco, it seems that continents have to be laid waste before governments are able to see that diplomacy can be more than the pursuit of national interests in international contexts.

Johannes Bell of Germany is portrayed as signing the peace treaties on 28 June 1919 in The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, by Sir William Orpen. ©Wikipedia  |  No changes were made. License link

It is, of course, different in the present emergency. The option of following a horrific war with visions among the ruins does not exist. Wars eventually end, whereas fundamental shift in planetary physics could, in theory, last forever.

On the face of it, this does not bode well for the possibilities of coordinated international action on climate change, nor the prospects of arriving at a comprehensive and workable plan at the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, now just a few months away.

And it was this concern that haunted the second gathering of the Scotia Group, which brought together some 30 global leaders to discuss how COP26 could lead the way to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions before 2030 – the year that may well mark the point at which non-linear change in the Earth’s climate becomes unavoidable.

Renewing our Vows

The problem of taking action before the slow-motion disaster of climate change becomes irreversible was the theme taken up by the meeting’s first speaker: Sarah Millar, the COP26 Coordinator for the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group. She made no attempt to downplay the scale of the tasks ahead.

We are, she said, all struggling to decide what COP26 is all about. We have been knocked off balance by the pandemic, we are unsure about the effectiveness of the all-important United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and we are all grappling with the complexity of the problems that we face and the scale of the solutions required.

There is no shortage of effort or awareness. The G7 summit ended with calls for a “green revolution that creates jobs, cuts emissions and seeks to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C”. The G20 meeting in November last year called for an “all hands on deck” approach to meeting the Paris targets. Other meetings will no doubt make similar calls, but as Sarah pointed out, they are not necessarily tied into the COP process in a coherent or strategic way.

She therefore issued a call of her own.

“We need a North Star and a rallying call for civil society, parties, businesses, non-state actors”

she said. The navigational image of the star suggests a way of aligning these parallel processes so they form a coherent whole. This consists, firstly, in repairing some of the damage caused by the past four years of unilateral nationalism: trust in the UN process has to be re-established, confidence rebuilt. Secondly, we have to establish accountability. Are national contributions adding up to what is needed?

These two considerations will both be advanced by a move under way to get countries onto the same reporting cycle. If that is achieved then, for the first time, it will be possible to compare what each government has done and judge whether or not it has lived up to spending pledges made at previous COPs.

At present, we have no unimpeachable data source, and therefore no way to make use of shame as an enforcement mechanism.

So, this COP will have the job of resetting the global community in preparation for the next stage of intensifying effort: playing fields will be levelled, apples compared with apples and from this will come – we can only hope – a sense of solidarity and common purpose.

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Communities of Linked Arms

One issue that came up repeatedly at this dialogue was the question of scale. Climate change is inclusive in a bad way: all of our economic interests are at risk if it accelerates, as is our physical and mental wellbeing. But this also means that every level of society has concrete reasons for striving to keep carbon emissions within bounds.

This then invites the question: what is the appropriate action at each level? How are the levels to be integrated? And: are some levels more important than others for devising, mobilising and sustaining effective action?

This was taken up by the second speaker at the dialogue: Dr Andrew Kerr. Andy’s contention was that there is a “surge of ambition and action” at the subnational level – roughly speaking, the stratum that covers city–regions, counties and municipalities.

The political bodies that operate here have the money, the staff and the data to connect with people, and do not produce the mere rhetoric we have come to associate with discourse at the national and international echelons. Issues such as affordable net-zero home construction, renovation and insulation, district heating, power generation and local transport can all be dealt with by the governments of cities, counties, provinces and regions.

One of our aims should, therefore, be to put these bodies at the centre of COP26.

As Andy phrased it: “We are seeing city–regions take on more ambitious targets and enact climate action far more readily than national governments. They’re driving practical change in ways that are engaging people on the ground. We’re trying to make our complex societies alter their behaviour in a very short space of time, and this can’t be done with a single policy framework or technology. It has to involve civic legitimacy. But at the moment there’s a disconnect between subnational action and COP processes.”

The Delegates Debate

The “linked arms” proposal, as Andy titled it, was taken up with enthusiasm by the attendees to the dialogue.

Victoria Preston

Victoria, a board member of the Innovation Platform for Global Change (iPlatform), saw it as exciting and practical, since it connected people at the “same level of intentions”.

David Kariuki Muigua

David, a leading Kenyan lawyer and academic, pointed to the need to ensure that communities in southern countries, who are most affected by – and most vulnerable to – climate change have a voice in the local debate. This would be best achieved by actively engaging with community groups and eliciting their opinions.

Anybody following the discussion thus far might be tempted to assume that it was urban networks that were being relied on for the resources and intellectual firepower needed to make a carbon cutting strategy work. This raises a question as to what role, if any, is envisaged for the agricultural industry and its workers. After all, this is the sector of the economy and the segment of the population that will be first to suffer from climate change.

Baroness Kingsmill

Denise, a lawyer, peer and economist, warned that the natural focus on energy tended to push agriculture to the bottom of the agenda. “I come from New Zealand,” she said, “and we’re conscious about climate change, but also dependent on cows and sheep, which have huge impact on the environment. How are we going to include ruminants in the debate?”

Jyotsna Puri

Jyotsna, a director at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, argued that one key to the success of policy at subnational level was understanding which incentives worked for small farmers. “We are dealing with people who are busy with life and we are asking them for more,” she said. “We must ensure an energy transition has at its core the small-scale farmers who produce a third of food on our tables.” And, for good measure, we should also rectify the imbalance of wealth caused by previous transitions that favoured urban areas.