Slow Motion of Governments to Save the Earth

By Hanieh Khakpour

29th March 2022

The policy agreement of the rulebook for Article 6 was the most important achievement of COP26 in Glasgow. However, the statistics show the government actions to reach the final goal of 1.5°C has been slow.

COP 26 in Glasgow has finished but concerns about climate change are on the rise worldwide. Many efforts are being made to force governments to look at the climate crisis. So, these days the virtual event of “Climate Action Tracker” is held in the United Arab Emirates.

This is Middle East and North Africa Climate Week 2022 (MENA), which lasts from 28th to the 31st of March in Dubai. It aims to highlight the importance of climate governance in MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa in accelerating the transition to a zero-emissions society.

This is not only an important event for Rising Clyde, but for the world. A speech made by Deborah Ramalope, leader of the climate policy analysis team, covered the“State of climate action post-Glasgow and what needs to happen in 2022.”

In this speech, she discussed government actions in terms of NDCs (Nationally Determined Contribution) targets and Net-Zero targets and said that the majority of countries have updated their NDC, but it’s still not taking us on the 1.5°C pathway agreed as part of the Paris agreement.

Ramalope said: “Although some of the net-zero targets and NDCs targets in COP26 are a little bit more ambitious than the previous one, the governments’ policies have not been improved and are also not aligned 1.5°C. There is a category of countries that have clearly unchanged targets and have not changed the previous targets.”

In 2015, it was estimated current policies would lead to global warming of 3.6°C. However, it has recently been announced that global warming has come down to 2.7°C due to current policies.

Ramalope referred to these slight improvements when looking towards an optimistic future. She said: “What we call the optimistic scenario, assumes that all announced targets will be implemented [in terms of NDCs and net-zero targets]. This allows us to set it to 1.82°C by the end of the century. This shows even if you add everything, the best-case scenario of what we have current commitments from governments, it’s still not taking us to 1.5°C It’s only taking us to about 1.8°C by end of the century, which is a concern.”

When questioned about the impact of COP26 on government actions, Ramalope said: “It is too soon to say what the impacts of COP26 are, but what we considered after the Paris Agreement was that governments have taken some actions. However, it was very slow. Governments must do more to make an impact to reach the goal of 1.5°C.”