Simmering feuds in global climate diplomacy are poised to erupt, stymying progress towards the EU’s main goal at the annual climate jamboree: addressing the massive gap between the wider world’s climate action pledges and what actually needs to be done.
When COP30 kicks off in Brazil this Monday, 10 November, months of careful climate diplomacy culminate in a two-week round of feverish negotiation – capping off a year that had a “bleak” start at the annual preparations in Bonn.
The question is whether the visible tensions from the June talks in Germany point to another disastrous COP – reminiscent of the one held 16 years ago at Copenhagen’s Bella Center, that is still overlooking the Danish capital as an eerie reminder of the failed 2009 climate talks.
It would take until 2015 to get greenhouse gas-slashing diplomacy back on the rails with the landmark Paris Agreement.
Issues the bloc thought it had overcome since Denmark – whether the EU can convince poorer countries to start slashing emissions faster and the climate finance question – have been bubbling to the surface again. Negotiators also fear that a previous fossil fuel exit deal remains divisive.
The Paris Agreement is being tested once more, as signatories treat its provisions as optional. Global climate protests really found their real momentum years after Paris was signed, with Greta Thunberg at the helm, to denounce a perceived lack of action then.
The same situation presents itself ahead of the Belém shindig.
Only a third of countries have announced or submitted 2035 climate pledges ahead of COP30, covering half of global emissions. The famous ‘nationally determined contribution’ (NDC) are, despite the climate target enshrined in the Paris Agreement, entirely voluntary. Together, they target 10% of total CO2 cuts.
As things stand, the world is on track for up to 2.8 °C of warming. That is almost double the 1.5-degree limit agreed in Paris, which is now widely seen as politically impossible.
Mind the gap
The EU will “call for a collective response to the ambition and implementation gaps of climate targets,” its diplomatic service said ahead of the climate conference.
How does one get climate laggards to “voluntarily” commit to upping their ambition without a formal negotiating track towards that end? And with little willingness of countries with lacklustre targets like Australia, China or Russia, and those who haven’t submitted a target at all? Being brash won’t help.
“During the COP, extremely cautious negotiations are required because this matter is very sensitive,” says Peter Lydén, a long-time follower of the COP process, working for NGO Germanwatch.
In the diplomatic arena, where one word can make the difference between a breakthrough and maintaining the status quo, the EU is by itself this time.
Washington – which used to send its well-connected climate envoy John Kerry (the only man who could speak to China on an equal footing), making COP28 a win – is missing entirely, and may even seek to torpedo talks.
It does not help that the EU is divided on how hawkish it ought to be in these talks. “There is a difference between being optimistic and realistic,” said Lars Aagaard, the Danish climate minister who co-chairs the bloc’s negotiating team.
“I’m very concerned,” Aagaard told reporters in late October. “For the EU, it is very important that the COP addresses the mitigation gap and focus on how action can be enhanced.”
The EU executive is much more considered in its choice of words. Jacob Werksman, the EU’s foremost climate negotiator and a principal advisor to the bloc’s climate department, points to the need for a “quite sophisticated and complex narrative”.
He argues the “real economy … will be telling the true story of the pace of change that’s happening in the real world”. Unlike the EU and other rich nations, major emitters like China have submitted low-ball targets, with Beijing aiming for just 10% by 2035.
The EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra himself has been busy picking fights with Beijing, over both its lack of ambition on emissions reduction and its reluctance to contribute to global climate finance.
The bloc is at odds with a majority of mooted deals on climate finance reform, according to a new analysis by CarbonBrief. Europe opposes both a push to renegotiate last year’s COP29 deal and the continued focus on ‘developed nations’ (which relies on an outdated UN classification the EU has been trying to change for years).
Evolution, or surrender?
Europe’s focus on climate action (and closing the gap) is also at odds with the priorities of host nation Brazil, which says adapting to climate change “as the next step in human evolution” should take precedent.
To that end, rich industrialised nations are being asked to put up more cash.
The EU would be happy to simply agree on a list of 100 “adaptation indicators” so the world’s progress – or lack thereof – on adapting to climate change can be measured accurately, allowing for comparison across specific regions.
For Lydén, only time will tell whether the EU can overcome its internal divisions and bridge the difference with everybody else to achieve its main target: narrowing the gap between what needs to be done to arrest rising temperatures and what world leaders are prepared to do.
“What really matters is what happens after the COP and whether it is possible to make the NDCs more ambitious worldwide,” he said.
(rh, vib)
