Is the summit more important in the fight against climate change after the meeting in Paris, in 2015. This year, nearly 200 countries agreed that global warming does not exceed 2 ° c above pre-industrial times. Now, at the Summit of the Climate of Katowice (COP24) which develops until the 14th of December, its members should define the rules of the game: a common framework to measure, review and compare where is the planet in the fight against the gas emissions of greenhouse , before the agreement enters into force in 2020. All of this, the calls to increase the targets multiply. According to cries the scientific community, the current ones are insufficient.
The debate is presented easy. The so-called "book of rules" must be closed this year and addresses the major contentious issues of the Paris Agreement, in addition to funding. But from 2015, the geopolitical scenario has changed. The president of the united states, Donald Trump kept firm in their rejection of the covenant, but is forced to continue the negotiations until 2020. Brazil, with a new president-elect, already has withdrawn the country's bid to chair the following Climate Summit. Even within Europe, called on to lead the climate movement, there are two distinct blocks among the countries advocating for raising the objectives and those who are more conservative.
The first challenge is to articulate the mechanism of control that check from 2020, if States comply with their emission reduction commitments. "We have No margin for delay in any of the decisions, because it would put at risk the credibility of the agreement," summed up a few days ago the director-general of the Spanish Office of Climate Change, Valvanera Ulargui , before a group of journalists. "This will be a COP complicated", he came to recognize the european commissioner for Energy and Climate Action, Miguel Arias Cañete. "The most important thing is that we are in agreement with the book of rules," he said. "If not, Paris will not be operating".
Increase objectives
The agreement signed in 2015 is not imposed on the countries a specific figure for reduction of emissions, but would be asked to submit "their best effort". During the Summit of Katowice will take stock of these first objectives . This year, however, the environmental agency of the UN and the scientific community have made it clear that they are insufficient: it would be as much as 3rd of global warming in 2100. To limit it to the 2nd, the threshold set to avoid the most extreme of the weather, today, countries all over the world should triple their efforts in fighting climate.
this is why, throughout these two weeks, it is expected that there will be various calls to increase the national goals as well as pressures to expedite the work on the exit plans of the fossil fuels. In fact, the meeting should serve as the first opportunity for governments to announce that they will go beyond what they originally promised in Paris. The conversations preparatory instead, they have thrown little hope of this happening on a large scale. Yes it is expected, at least, the reminder that, by 2020, the countries should review their commitments in a mandatory way, and the establishment of how and when they must comply with them.
the inaugural session of The COP held today starts at half speed for its near-coincidence with the meeting of the G20 in Buenos Aires , which at least confirmed the irreversibility of the Paris Agreement –except in the case of US–. To Katowice had been summoned the leaders of the signatory countries, but there will be big absences like that of the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the French Emmanuel Macron, as well as to the presidents of Russia and the united States, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The quote also begins shrouded in the controversy: it is held in a country in which 80% of its energy is produced with coal, and the summit is sponsored by the biggest Polish producer of this fossil fuel.
climate StrategyYes it is expected that the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, go today to the front of the Spanish delegation, and to defend the need for the more developed countries to assume commitments "more ambitious" those embodied in the Paris Agreement. In this way, Spain is attending, in line with the recent plans of the European Commission, that a few days ago presented its climate strategy in the long term to provide for a scenario of zero net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050.
The last big issue will be funding, as in the Agreement of Paris the developed nations pledged to help developing nations to reduce their emissions, as well as in tasks of adaptation and mitigation. It will be one of the main stumbling blocks in the negotiations, as the industrialised countries must try to fill the gap left by the US, The Paris Agreement included the creation of a fund of 100,000 million dollars per year (88.300 million euros) after 2020.