World Insights: 3 key issues to watch out for COP26

As the United Nations (UN) climate conference, billed as a "turning point for humanity," begins in Glasgow on Sunday, several issues are considered by environment experts to be critical: global carbon market, climate finance, and actual implementation.

During the delayed 26th United Nations Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP26), which is the first conference after the five-year review cycle under the Paris Agreement inked in 2015, global leaders are expected to review overall progress and plan future actions.

The conference, lasting two weeks, also comes at a time when the world has gone through a rapid-fire onslaught of climate-change-related weather disasters, from severe flooding to wild fires.

To make the climate gathering meaningful, progress has to be made on such fundamental issues as finalizing the rules for the Paris Agreement's market mechanism, wealthy countries' unmet finance pledge to the developing countries, and the ability of the world's governments to transform words into action.

"PARIS RULEBOOK"

In 2015, COP21 in Paris passed a climate deal uniting almost all countries across the world in agreeing to cap global warming at well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible.

While Paris climate agreement was hailed as "historic, durable and ambitious," negotiators have failed to agree on Article 6 of the deal, which is about some technical details of the implementation of the deal in building the market mechanisms, especially the global carbon market.

COP25 in Madrid failed again to reach an agreement on Article 6. Without working out final details of what has been referred to "The Paris Rulebook," the world's governments lack the necessary market-based approaches to attain the grand goals laid out in the Paris Agreement.

"Getting these rules right is critical for fighting climate change: depending on how they are structured, Article 6 could help the world avoid dangerous levels of global warming or let countries off the hook from making meaningful emissions cuts," said the World Resources Institute, a global research non-profit organization.

"I see a COP that is being pushed by developing nations. They want solutions, they want the rule book to be complete to start implementing the Paris Agreement," Gibson Mwangi, an expert on climate change from Kenya, told Xinhua.

Discussions around Article 6 have long been dominated by issues like how to avoid double counting of emission reductions. All eyes are on COP26 to see if it will solve them and produce the much-needed Paris Rulebook.

CLIMATE FINANCE

Developed countries built their wealth by burning fossil fuels and have contributed most to the climate crisis, from which lower-income countries now disproportionately suffer even though they have done little to cause climate change.

To pay their climate debt, wealthy countries in 2009 pledged 100 billion U.S. dollars a year to help lower-income nations by 2020. However, they still have not made good on the pledge and recent reports indicate that this goal could slip to 2023.

The Tursday-published Foreign Affairs magazine said in an article that the wealthy countries' commitment reflected in part a recognition of "the deep injustice at the heart of the climate crisis."

A UN-appointed independent expert group on climate finance said in a report published in December that this commitment is "the bedrock of the entire international climate finance system."

"We hope the western countries would meet their financial pledges, and we all hope that this conference will succeed because it will bring good to the whole world," Magdy Tawfik Khalil, professor of environment at Ain Shams University in Cairo, told Xinhua.

He explained that people in North Africa are concerned about future ice melt due to global warming that would raise the level of the Mediterranean Sea or any sea, which in turn would submerge coastal areas and many cities.

ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION

As COP26 gets underway, experts have underscored the importance of translating high ambitions into concrete actions.

"The climate summit in Glasgow is the last attempt to avoid a catastrophe and reach an agreement on climate change," Ivana Antunovic Jovic, editor at Croatian Television, told Xinhua.

"There have already been many similar gatherings, but there are no results, and the consequences of climate change are becoming more visible," she said.

"In recent years, we have witnessed the United States ignoring the (climate) problem during the former administration. I hope that the new administration will understand the problem and try to solve it," Croatian climatologist Tomislav Peric told Xinhua.

In his phone conversation on Friday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China is unwaveringly committed to accelerating green and low-carbon development, and has always walked its talk.

China submitted two documents on its nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and long-term emission control strategies to the UN this week. It aims to strive to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Last month at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, China also pledged that the country will not build new coal-fired power stations overseas.

It is never easy for a developing country with a population of more than 1.4 billion that has not completed industrialization or urbanization to make such promises. China will complete the world's most dramatic reduction in carbon emission intensity, and realize carbon neutrality from carbon peaking in the shortest time in global history.

But the actual results have showed that China is serious about pursuing green development, and is honoring its pledges with an aim to contribute to humanity's better shared future.

For example, the country's carbon intensity in 2020 was 48.4 percent less than that in 2005, exceeding its commitment of achieving a reduction of 40-45 percent in carbon intensity during the same period.

"The pandemic has really raised the urgency. We recognize now more than ever that human well-being and planetary well-being are intrinsically linked with each other," Akanksha Khatri, head of Nature and Biodiversity at World Economic Forum, told Xinhua.

"The real negotiations, of course, take place behind closed doors. I hope everyone at the table can get over their tensions, in the interest of the whole Earth," said Leo Meyer, former project leader at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and current director of Dutch-based ClimateContact Consultancy.