Final Winters

I will start by telling you an inconvenient truth: humanity is on the verge of extinction. Human-caused global warming is a physical reality that cannot be denied, its effects can be seen in the warming of the oceans, the land surface and the lower atmosphere. This is the cause of the altered rainfall patterns, the megadroughts, the melting of Arctic ice and the rise of sea levels- which by the way, is the reason why countries you have never heard of in the media, like Palau and Kiribati, are already starting to disappear leaving millions without a home. It is frightening to think that more than 50% of the Earth’s corals have been lost, not only because of their immense beauty but also because they consume a third of the World’s CO2. They are a stabilising force in our climate that can no longer do their job fast enough to sustain us and our beloved felines.

In a world where you will be able to sail over the North pole in 2040, the international system’s response is the Paris Agreement. The Agreement signified the culmination of years of arduous negotiations under the intense pressure to prevent the reiterated failure of other previous environmental treaties. The Paris Agreement establishes the objective of keeping the increase of the global average temperature to below 2°C with respect to pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. To achieve this, the emission of worldwide greenhouse gases (GHGs) must be dramatically reduced. The Agreement’s method of achieving this goal is through a bottom-up approach of unilateral pledges known as National Determined Contributions (NDC). In other words, each country must set its own voluntary objectives. However, the World’s current situation is critical. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that if the global net human-caused emissions of CO2 do not fall by 45 per cent from levels by 2030, reaching net zero in 2050, it is unlikely that the Paris Agreement will reach its goal. More importantly, if the temperature of the Earth increases by more than 3°C, a tipping point of no return would be triggered, pushing our planet into an imminent state of mass extinction.

The Agreement commits parties to hold the increase in the global average temperature well below 2°C and obliges countries to submit NDCs at a regular interval of five years, which in turn are expected to surpass the NDCs ambitions of previous ones. Another opportunity presented in the Agreement is that in contrast with previous accords, it includes all countries in its mitigation efforts. Whereas, for example, the Kyoto Treaty placed obligations to reduce GHG emissions only on industrialised nations. Still, the Paris Agreement retains a certain degree of differentiation between developed and developing countries. Developed ‘shall continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets’, developing countries ‘should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts’ and are only ‘encouraged’ to move over time towards the kind of emissions reduction or limitation targets that apply to the industrialised countries. Moreover, the Agreement mandates that in order to help developing countries meet their commitments, developed countries must provide financial resources to aid them. It was decided that developed countries would collectively contribute US$ 100 billion a year by 2020 and that the parties would continue assembling this sum until 2025.

Now, let us explore where the Paris Agreement so categorically fails. One of its most notable obstacles is the fact that there has been limited guidance on the formulation of NDCs. This has caused NDCs varying in content, which more than often lack details concerning their aims. Indeed, as NDCs come from numerous countries, the quality and quantity of the information released is extremely irregular. In fact, they range from three to 57 pages. Paradoxically, the quality of the information of the NDCs is inversely proportional to the level of income of the country, leading medium-low and low-income states to offer higher than average quality of information. They mostly correspond to African states and small islands where climate change presents the greatest threat. In a global context, only 18.5% of the NDCs are offering general information of high quality, and only 12.7% as far as finance is concerned. The richest countries in the World, OECD member states, tend to provide poor data about the funding of their policies, calling into question the leading role of the developed countries.

Another major challenge to the Paris Agreement is the tensions over climate finance. The US$ 100 billion commitment of financial mobilisation from developed countries to help developing ones has not been absent of flaws. The agreement recognises the significance of financial aid for vulnerable states. However, the Agreement does not prescribe which developing countries are vulnerable and how to prioritise funding among them. This has led to the financial commitment of developed countries to be open to their own interpretation, leaving vulnerable countries in a susceptible and dependent position. The climate fund simply falls short. For example, 14 out of 51 low-income countries require US$31.2 billion just for their forestry and land-use sectors, and only five of the above countries account for 77% of the total sum. The fund is clearly insufficient for developing countries’ needs. Furthermore, the Agreement does not provide any liability or compensation for vulnerable countries damaged by environmental disasters, a decision introduced by the United States. This unequivocally affects the poor who are pressured to self-sustain in the face of adversity.

However, the biggest failure of the Agreement is the fact that the majority of the countries subscripted to it are not honouring their pledged NDCs and the United Kingdom is no exception. As a great number of scientific reports are showing that keeping the increase of the global average temperature to below 2 °C is unlikely, not to say impossible, and achieving the 1.5 °C target is simply unfeasible. Experts believe that in the bestcase-scenario, annual World emissions would increase by 19.3% in 2030. If this level remains constant between 2030 and 2050, the world temperature will increase by at least 3 °C. To make matters worse, new scientific studies are indicating that even at under a 2°C temperature rise, vast areas of Africa, Europe, North America and South America are at a high risk of flooding, and even with a 1.5°C temperature increase, highly populated regions in South Asia and India are at great risk.

The Paris Agreement Accord is fragile, and its main objectives are unlikely to be achieved. However, not everything is lost. There is still hope, our only hope, the mobilisation of civil society. Fighting climate change is not merely in the hands of a few politicians that have already failed us; you are a key player in this global struggle. Social movements are key drivers for change. When civil society is organised, change happens. This is what history has taught us with the abolishment of slavery, the suffragettes, the independence of India, and the civil rights movement. We all have a responsibility to set an example before it is too late. On what side of history will you be? That is the question.