DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — When United Nations climate talks wrap up in Dubai this week, big promises will be made about how the world will combat climate change caused by burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.
Negotiators are discussing how quickly fossil fuels should be cut and how to cover the cost of a major shift to green energy, raising the possibility of a historic deal.
Previous summits have ended with funds created to help developing countries transition to green energies, pledges to reduce pollution and promises to keep people at their most vulnerable at the center of policy debates.
So, did the countries keep their promises?
Whatever decisions are made in this year’s negotiations, here’s a look at five big promises made in nearly 30 years of negotiations and what’s happened since then.
EMISSIONS CUTTS IN KYOTO
The third climate summit took place in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, one of the hottest years on record in the 20th century.
The agreement, known as the Kyoto Protocol, required 41 high-emitting countries around the world and the European Union to reduce their emissions by slightly more than 5% compared to 1990 levels. Emission cuts can come from many places, from using green energies that don’t produce emissions, like wind and solar, to making things that produce emissions, like combustible motor vehicles, run cleaner.
Despite the agreement to reduce emissions, countries agreed to take action under the Kyoto Protocol only in 2005. The United States and China, the two largest emitters then and now, did not sign the agreement.
Kyoto has failed to keep its promises. Since then emissions have increased significantly. At the time, 1997 was the warmest year on record since the pre-industrial era. 1998 broke that record, as have more than a dozen years since.
But Kyota is still considered a turning point in the fight against climate change because it was the first time so many countries recognized the problem and vowed to take action.
COPENHAGEN’S CLIMATE CASH
As the 2009 conference in Denmark approached, the world was closing out its hottest decade ever recorded.
The summit is widely viewed as a failure to break the impasse between developed and developing countries over reducing emissions and whether poor nations can use fossil fuels to grow their economies. Still, he saw a big commitment: money for countries to transition to clean energy.
Rich countries have pledged to transfer $100 billion a year to developing countries for green technologies by 2020. However, by the early 2020s, this amount did not reach 100 billion dollars, and they were subject to criticism from both developing states and environmentalists.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said that by 2022, rich countries may finally have reached or even surpassed the $100 billion target. But Oxfam, a group focused on anti-poverty efforts, said 70 percent of the funds were likely in the form of loans, adding to the debt crisis in developing countries.
As climate change worsens, experts say promised funds are not enough. Research published by climate economist Nicholas Stern found that developing countries likely need $2 trillion each year for climate action by 2030.
PARIS AGREEMENT
A global agreement to combat climate change was not adopted by nearly 200 countries until 2015, calling on the world to collectively cut greenhouse gases. However, they decided that this would not be binding, so countries that did not comply could not be sanctioned.
The Paris Agreement is considered the UN’s greatest achievement in its efforts to combat climate change. It was decided with a standing ovation at the general assembly on December 12, exactly eight years ago. Since pre-industrial times, nations have agreed to keep warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Paris’s legacy lives on, and the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is still at the center of climate debate. Scientists agree that the 1.5 threshold should be maintained because every tenth of a degree of warming leads to even more disastrous consequences in the form of extreme weather events for an already hot planet. The world has not exceeded the limit set in the Paris Agreement — it has warmed by about 1.1 or 1.2 degrees Celsius (2 to 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the early 1800s — but remains on that path now unless drastic emissions cuts are made quickly.
GLASGOW AND COAL
Six years after Paris, global warming had reached such a critical point that negotiators wanted to recommit to the goal of limiting warming to levels agreed in 2015.
Average temperatures were already 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than in pre-industrial times.
The Glasgow summit was postponed to 2021 as the world emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic. This included mass protests led by climate activist Greta Thunberg, who led a global movement of youth activists demanding more action from leaders.
After last-minute disagreements over the language of the final document, the countries agreed to “phase out” coal, which was less strong than the original “phase out” idea. India and China, two emerging economies heavily dependent on coal, have sought to dilute the language.
Burning coal causes more emissions than any other fossil fuel, approximately 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The combustion of oil and gas are also important sources of emissions.
So far, countries have failed to implement the Glasgow agreement. Emissions from coal have increased slightly, and major coal-using countries have yet to begin moving away from the dirtiest fossil fuels.
India is an example of this. More than 70% of electricity generation is dependent on coal, and a major increase in coal-based electricity generation capacity is planned over the next 16 months.
LOSS AND DAMAGE IN SHARM EL-SHEIKH
At climate talks held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh last year, countries agreed for the first time to create a fund to help poor nations recover from the effects of climate change.
A few months after devastating floods in Pakistan that killed nearly 2,000 people and caused losses of over $3.2 trillion, COP27 delegates are calling for losses and losses to be eliminated from homes being demolished, land submerged and lost income from crops damaged by climate change. He decided to establish a damage fund. was compensated.
Following disagreements over what the fund should look like, the fund was officially created on the first day of talks in Dubai this year. Over $700 million has already been pledged. Commitments and the amounts countries choose to commit are voluntary.
Climate experts say the pledges are only a small fraction of the billions of dollars needed as temperatures rise and climate-driven extreme weather such as hurricanes, rising sea levels, floods and droughts increase. ___
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series produced under the India Climate Journalism Program in collaboration with the Associated Press, the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and the Press Foundation of India.
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