Jakarta – COP26 President Alok Sharma warned that progress made during the 2021 UN climate summit is fragile, unless commitments are turned into real actions. The UN’s COP26 climate summit in November 2022 ended with a deal to ‘phase down’ coal.
“Our overall goal was to keep 1.5 alive. … We know from the IPCC report that came out last August that we are already at 1.1 degrees. Look around you, in this fine country you see the impacts of climate change even at 1.1 degrees. You see that around the world,” Sharma said in a talk with Dino Patti Djalal, chairman of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) broadcast on the FPCI Youtube channel Thursday (17/2).
He said that when the UK took on the role of COP presidency, less than 30% of the global economy was covered by a net zero target where now it’s over 90%. “Eighteen of 20 of the G20 Nations have formally committed to net zero by the middle of this century. That is a remarkable thing. We’ve got 150 countries that came forward with enhanced NDCs,” Sharma said.
He pointed out that some of the reports predict that if all of these commitments are delivered upon, the world is heading on a trajectory below 2 degrees of global warming. “The fragility comes from us now needing to make sure that those commitments are adhered to. So I’ll keep telling this throughout this year … that that’s what this year’s about: for countries to deliver.”
In January, the BBC reported that Sharma outlined four key priorities for this year, including getting countries to increase their actions on cutting carbon and concentrating on getting the richer G20 group of nations to do more. There must also be a renewed focus on helping countries to adapt to climate change, and to make advances on the issue of loss and damage. (nsh)
