Paris Agreement goals still way off, says COP26 president

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A ‘Covid approach’ is needed to address the international climate change challenge.

The world is still “a long way off” from meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the president of the global COP26 UN climate conference said this week.

British politician Alok Sharma was speaking during a global discussion on the ‘green’ transition in sectors such as energy, transport and food systems, held as part of the 2021 spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

“Oceans are warming, storms are intensifying, and yet we are a long way off meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement”, he said at the virtual meeting. “Unless we act now, the human, economic and environmental cost will dwarf anything that humanity has seen before.”

COP26, which will be held in November in Glasgow, Scotland, aims to accelerate action towards the Paris treaty goals, which centre around limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

John Kerry, US special presidential envoy for climate, called the conference “the last best opportunity we have to get real and serious.” Urging developed countries to step up efforts to reduce emissions, he said: “It is essential we raise ambition; we make Glasgow the next step in defining not what we’re willing to do but what we really need to do in order to be able to get the job done.”

Energy access must also be part of the green transition, according to Damilola Ogunbiyi, chief executive officer at UN partner Sustainable Energy for All. Globally, nearly 800 million people do not have access to electricity, while 2.8 billion lack access to clean cooking sources, she said, which is equivalent to the populations of Africa, Europe and China combined.

To change their lives, she said that governments needed to focus on policies in the areas of promoting renewable and sustainable energy and on ease of doing business and regulations. “We all see that globally, when we come together, just the amazing work we can do, and the Covid vaccine is a perfect example”, said Ogunbiyi, who is also the special representative of the UN secretary-general for Sustainable Energy for All.

“We literally have to have a Covid vaccine response to help a lot of developing countries because it’s not that they don’t want to transition, or they don’t want to do the right thing. It’s a fact that if you do need to transition, there is a lot of funding that is needed,” said Ogunbiyi.