Revisiting the UN Climate Change Conference: COP 25
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Remember COP25? It wasn’t so long ago that the world watched leaders from around the world gather in Madrid to discuss the future of our climate. Having the conference completely sunk in, I felt motivated to write about my experience attending COP25. This blog will cover the most important outcomes and observations of COP25 as well as my personal experiences and what we, as youth, achieved at the conference.
At the end of every year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as “COP”, takes place with negotiations, meetings, informal consultations, workshops, events and press releases on the state of our environment. This past year, the 25th COP was held in Madrid under Chilean presidency with approximately 27,000 participants.
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The goal of this COP was to finalize the rulebook of the Paris Agreement, also called the “Katowice Package”. In 2015, parties agreed to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and pursue all efforts to limit it to 1.5°C, with parties progressively enhancing their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to tackle climate change to meet the long-term goals. Most key areas such as transparency, finance, mitigation and adaptation have been agreed upon in 2018, however the unresolved issue of international carbon markets (the so-called ‘Article 6’) was to be resolved at COP25.
Latest scientific reports of NASA, NOAA and Berkeley Earth identified the past five years as the warmest in history. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached another new high record. UN Secretary General Antonio Gueterres warned the world in his opening speech: “Global average levels of carbon dioxide reached 407.8 parts per million in 2018. Not long ago, this was seen as an unthinkable tipping point. Ten years ago, if countries had acted on the science available, they would have needed to reduce emissions by 3.3% each year. We didn’t. Today, we need to reduce emissions by 7.6% each year to reach our goals”, Gueterres continued, “We are looking at global heating between 3.4 and 3.9°C by the end of the century. The impact on all life on the planet – including ours – will be catastrophic”.
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Signs reading “CLIMATE AMBITION!”, “Don’t call it change, call it climate emergency”, and “It is time to act now. #tiempodeactuar” were visible all around Madrid representing the crowd’s response to the dire consequences of climate change that we are already seeing in the extreme weather events around the world; not to mention the $3 trillion of economic losses from 1998 to 2017.
It has become clear to all states that it’s a matter of a rapid phase-out of coal, oil and gas. Australia, Brazil and the US are already feeling the effects of climate change first hand. Nonetheless, during COP25 these countries were aggravating climate negotiations in pursuit of national economic profit, especially concerning Article 6. Australia, Brazil and India continued to push for a system with loopholes, which would allow them to double count emission reductions and to use that to carryover credits from the Kyoto Protocol to meet their respective targets. This would however undermine the integrity of the whole system as the carbon market would be flooded with cheap credits that do not represent real emission reductions. In the end, there was consensus that not coming to an agreement is better than a bad agreement.
Furthermore, indigenous people from vulnerable countries repeatedly called for a new finance stream addressing Loss and Damage (L&D) exclusively. The question of who is to pay for the impacts of a heated planet, continued to be a heated topic. The US rejected any involvement and referred to other developed countries to integrate L&D in existing climate funds. Climate financing remains one of the biggest obstacles to facilitating proper action. The crunch points of the negotiations were yet to be resolved and talks have been pushed to continue onward without direct resolution. With this in mind, it’s hard to imagine how a consensus will be found any more at the next COP. COP25 turned out to be the longest climate talks in history, in a moment where we are more worried about what the future holds. Never before has the call for more ambitious climate action been so loud and clear and the divide between the inside and the outside of COP25 been so big.
Fortunately, the main issue to work towards solving during the COP, didn’t require any consensus: the raising of the voluntary climate targets, particularly the NDCs. To hold the big emitters accountable for their emissions and to not let climate politics fail, the majority of countries supported the inclusion of ambitious wording in the draft decision. Yet again, it is the conspicuous countries mentioned before that hindered the progress. Developing countries could aid this push forward, but if only they receive proper funding commitments from developed countries on finance. The EU is playing a key role in this, galvanising the talks with publishing its new Green Deal during the second week of COP25 and targeting carbon neutrality by 2050. They join 73 other countries who have already signed up to a similar goal. This COP clearly showed that the days of superficial climate policy are over.
There’s also good news to mention, it’s not all doom and gloom. There were plenty of positive outcomes of COP25, one of which was the creation of the Gender Action Plan for the advancement of women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in climate policy at all levels. Other highlights included the Global Climate Action Agenda and the creation of a “High Ambition Coalition” led by the Marshall Islands to enhance current climate pledges, short-term action and long-term low emission development strategies. For the more than half a million peaceful protesters that took to the streets of Madrid during the COP, inspiration could be seen in the youth in attendance as noted by the media and press. Persuading world leaders and decision-makers to take action through the protest was just the tip of the iceberg, as the urgency of reaching more ambitious goals becomes stronger for the future of humanity.
I was very fortunate to be granted an observer badge by my Swedish University to participate. Being at COP25 allowed me to better understand different interests and to recognize that climate change is a monstrous problem, one that requires all kinds of stakeholders to find a common solution. As a student attendee with no decisive power, I was limited in what I could do. I joined youth groups such as Sail to the COP and the Nordic Youth Delegation to have a stronger voice. Together, we called out Shell for greenwashing. We sat down with Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future to criticize world leaders for not doing enough. We stated our demands to the Nordic ministers who want to take global lead in climate action, but are still subsidizing and extracting fossil fuels. We called upon the unsustainable travel industry and even got members of the Dutch delegation to #railtotheCOP to COP26 this year in Glasgow.
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I also had the honour to meet and talk with Dr. Sylvia Earle, a true pioneer in exploring our world’s ocean. I would go as far as to say that no one knows the ocean better than her. With an astonishing 84 years, she is still contributing to marine research and education. Her words, as inspiring as always are giving hope and continue to motivate me and so many others to continue what they are passionate about by doing their bit to make this world a more liveable place in a turbulent era of climate change. In her own words, “We still have the best chance we will ever have, right now, to take action to embrace as much as we can with true care because it matters, economically, ecologically, it matters to our very existence. Now we know.”. We are the first generation able to understand the magnitude of the problems that we are facing and simultaneously, we are the last generation able to do something about it. We are armed with knowledge that we now need to turn into action. This does not only count for protecting the ocean, but also for the use of advancing technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation to the travel and tourism sector.
At COP26, we hope to see a global increase in climate ambition towards a level consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, keeping in mind that reaching that 1.5°C increase is not off the table yet.
Stay tuned for the next part of this blog to explore how tourism and the ocean are strongly linked and how they can be part of the greater solution to cutting CO2 emissions and in effect, climate change.