Crucial climate talks kick off in Poland, massive breakthrough unlikely

KATOWICE (POLAND): More than 25,000 participants are making there way to the Polish city of Katowice for the 24th UN-sponsored climate talks that began on Sunday. This meeting, the most consequential since the Paris Agreement in 2015 comes in the backdrop of a year of extreme weather events from across the world and warnings from scientists that countries need to exponentially need to step up their efforts to counter the threats of catastrophic and climate change.

The havoc by a temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius be it floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves, and other extreme weather events serves as an indicator of the damage that unchecked global warming can cause. Exactly how much more needs to be done has been laid out in several recent scientific assessments.

The UN in its annual assessment of emissions gap found that the climate pledges made by countries were not adequate to achieve the goal of restricting temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius. The report concludes that countries will need to triple their nationally determined climate efforts if the collective target set in the Paris Agreement is to be met.


The Emissions Gap Report was preceded by the special report by the UN’s scientific assessment panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found that it would far safer and less economically devastating to restrict global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But that such a goal would require a five-fold increase in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How to ensure that countries step up their efforts is one key focus at Katowice.

In this context, the UN’s climate boss Patricia Espinosa stressed on the importance of finalising the guidelines for implementing the Paris Agreement, commonly known as the Paris rulebook. “This is important because we need some kind of an instrument that will allow us to follow up on how much progress we are doing, where we are doing well, and where not so well. The many reports and catastrophic weather events has made the urgency of action more evident. This makes finalising this negotiations more urgent,” Espinosa told ET.

More aggressive efforts to slow down global warming will require more than countries to pledge to undertake more efforts to reduce carbon dioxide pollution. “We need to find a good balance in the guidelines,” said the UN climate boss. This, Espinosa said, will require balancing three broad segments--adaptation to climate change, emission reduction to find ways to get the most ambitious plans, and ensuring the means to implement the more ambitious plans which includes finance, technology and building the capacity of countries to take action. “This requires a good transparent framework, to ensure the confidence in the international community and everyone in the regime is paying attention to their commitments,” said Espinosa.

Despite the urgency, expectations of a massive breakthrough in ambition of action or finance are low. French President Emmanuel Macron, who was expected to attend the high-level leaders’ summit at Katowice talks on Monday has had to cancel in the face of escalating protests over fossil fuel prices and taxation in France. Brail, which was slated to host the climate talks in 2019, has expressed its inability to do so citing budgetary consideration. While many fear that it portends further changes in Brazil’s stance on global collaborative action on climate given President-elect Jair Bolsonaro stance on the Paris Agreement during the election campaign.