So What Have The Leaders of the Planet Agreed to do About Climate Change After Katowice?

December 16, 2018 – Remember December 15th as either the beginning of a real effort to combat climate change or just another meeting in which effective policies and programmes got kicked down the road until next year. The nearly 200 countries, and 28,000 participants, represented at COP24 in Katowice, Poland, signed a rulebook containing 156 pages of guidelines for doing what the Paris COP21 Climate Agreement of 2015 set out as the goal: keeping global temperature rise well below 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) degrees.

The statement issued by the United Nations at the conclusion of the conference states:

• 197 parties to the Paris Climate Agreement have agreed to a common set of guidelines to “promote trust among nations that all countries are playing their part in addressing the challenge of climate change.”
• the rulebook will come into play beginning in 2020 (why not 2019 is not discussed in the UN statement)
• all parties will be required to provide data on their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), a description of each’s domestic climate mitigation, adaptation policies, and actions.
• all parties will also provide an indication of their financial support to turn the current $100 billion per year Green Climate Fund commitment into a reality, and to further commit to new financial targets from 2025 onward in support of Developing World countries facing climate change.
• guidelines for stocktaking the effectiveness of climate actions globally will be benchmarked in 2019 and reassessed in 2023.
• guidelines for assessing progress on the development of climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies with a mechanism for sharing these inventions and programs globally.

No “market mechanism” was agreed upon, as a result, the collective nations of the world still don’t have a method by which to price carbon pollution whether through pricing, cap-and-trade, or regulation. In the United Nations press announcement post-conference, it noted that a great majority of countries expressed a willingness to include guidelines “to operationalize the market mechanisms in the overall package.” Known as Article 6, a way to use the economics of the market to measure and mitigate released emissions, the COP24 attendees agreed to table this item and address it again at next year’s COP25 to be held in Chile.

Other highlights of the conference included:

• tabling of a Low Carbon Technology report entitled “Going further, faster” from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
• five of the world’s largest banks including ING, BBVA, Societe Generale, Standard Chartered, and BNP Paribas committed to a rigorous review of the investment portfolios to align with the goals of the Paris COP21 Climate Agreement.
•  Maersk, the world largest shipping company committed to a zero CO2 emissions target by 2050 with the goal to have commercially viable carbon-neutral vessels in its fleet by 2030, as well as adaptation of technologies to lower emissions on legacy vessels.
• the Fiji-led year-long Talanoa Dialogue completed its efforts releasing a report for subnational climate action by cities and regional governments including policymaking initiatives.
• the NAZCA network saw 20 of Poland’s cities join it. The network has now grown to 9,378 cities, 126 regions, 2,431 companies, 363 investors, and 98 civil society organizations, all committed to action to combat climate change.
• RegionsAdapt, a network of regional governments, published a report highlighting the challenges to protect vulnerable populations and reporting over 260 adaptation strategies by 38 regional governments within 16 countries.
• 415 investors representing $32 trillion USD in assets under management, issued a call-to-action for private sector investors to focus on the economics of a low carbon transition, and requested governments to phase out coal-fired power, fossil fuel subsidies, and create meaningful carbon pricing.
• 43 global fashion brands including Burberry, Esprit, Guess, The Gap, Hugo Boss, H&M, Levi Strauss, Puma, Target and others, committed to decarbonizing their business sector with a commitment to a 30% GHG emission reduction by 2030.
• the EAT-Lancet Commission announced it would be releasing in January in the Lancet Medical Journal, a report on sustainable food development in the face of climate change, and how we grow our food, and what we eat, can help us meet the goals of COP21.
• the C40 cities in collaboration with the authors of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming, announced it will produce a detailed action plan for cities with pathways to achieve no more than a 1.5 Celsius (2.4 Fahrenheit) rise in global atmospheric mean temperatures.
• Even sports organizations launched an initiative called the Sports for Climate Action Framework, to gather sports organizations from around the world to both raise awareness with fans, and act to meet COP21 goals.

So who were the flies in the ointment at the conference?

• Brazil – withdrew its offer to host COP25 based on budget constraints and its transition to a new government. The ascension of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency and a known climate-change skeptic has threatened to eliminate environmental restraints against development within the Amazon rainforest.
• United States – not only did the American federal government push the “clean coal” agenda in presentations. They also led a group of countries objecting to the tabling of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming that was only recently released showing that the nations of the world were heading to warming of 3.0 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century if action wasn’t taken in the next 12 years.
• Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait joined the United States in objecting to the IPCC report.

Should we be happy about the results achieved at COP24? If I were a young person I would be on the streets protesting, hiring lawyers to go after polluting corporations and governments failing to act, and organizing politically to elect politicians prepared to focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and implementation. A 15-year-old teenager in attendance at COP24, Greta Thunberg, a climate activist with over 51,000 Twitter followers, and one of 20,000 students around the world who have organized high school protests about the lack of climate change action, expressed her frustration to Forbes stating “This is an amazing opportunity. But if it continues the way it is now, we are never going to achieve anything.”