Govind TekaleGovernments gave their blessing on Sunday to a major new UN report on Climate Change (CC), and the battle between rich & poor developing nations over emissions targets & financial aid to vulnerable nations.
The report by hundreds of the world’s top scientists was supposed to be approved by government delegations on Friday at the end of a week-long meeting in the Swiss town of Interlaken. The closing gavel was repeatedly pushed back as officials from big nations such as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States & the European Union haggled through the weekend over the working of key phrases in the text.
The report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) caps a series that digests vast amounts of research on global warming compiled since the Paris climate accord was agreed upon in 2015.
A summary of the report was approved early Sunday but agreement on the main text dragged on for several hours with some observers fearing it might need to be postponed.
The UN planned to publish the report at a news conference early Monday afternoon. The unusual process of having countries sign off on a scientific report is intended to ensure that governments accept its findings as authoritative advice on which to base their action.
At the start of the meeting, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on delegates to provide “cold hard facts” to drive home the message that there‘s little time left for the world to limit global warming to 15 degrees Celsius (2.7Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial times.
While average global temperatures have already increased by 1.1 Celsius since the 19th century, Guterres insisted that the 1.5 target limit remains possible “with rapid & deep emissions reductions across all sectors of the global economy.
Observers said the IPCC meetings have increasingly become political as the stake for curbing global warming increases, mirroring the annual UN climate talks that usually take place at the end of the year.
Among the thorniest issues at the current meeting was how to define which nations count as vulnerable developing countries, making them eligible for cash from the “loss & damage” fund agreed on at the last UN climate talks in Egypt. Delegates have also battled over figures stating how much greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut over the coming years & how to include artificial or natural carbon removal efforts in the equations.
As the country that has released the biggest amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since industrialization, the US has pushed back strongly against the notion of historic responsibility for climate change.
