COP26: Hopes for Small Wins, People First, Sustainable Vision
Since the COP conventions began in 1995, the Parties have reached several landmark multinational agreements. (c) GeoLiteracy, LLC, 2021.
I think it’s fair to say the world has been through the wringer since the COP25 conference in December 2019.
The 2020 conference was yet another victim of the global Covid-19 Pandemic. The United States served the rest of the parties some unwelcome drama when then-President Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, formally withdrawing on November 4, 2020, and then formally rejoining the agreement under President Biden on February 19, 2021.
Meanwhile, the other 195 parties continued working toward keeping climate change to “well below 2 degrees Celsius.” Brad Plumer and Nadjia Popovich reported in the New York Times that rapid growth in alternative energy technology policies has given us one degree of reprieve: the 4 degrees of warming by 2100 that we expected in 2014 may have now been cut to 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F) by 2100 (note a). But that is still a lot of change. And those impacts do not occur evenly across the globe. We will still be in for a remarkably different planetary experience.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends we take more drastic measures to try and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. How do we do this?
We figure out what is working and replicate those strategies.
The pre-session conferences have already begun this week, and the City of Glasgow is abuzz hosting the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 October – 12 November 2021. So, what am I hoping for from this year’s COP meeting in Glasgow?
(1) Celebration of small successes and push for replication of successful strategies
As I mentioned above, lo and behold, we may have made some small progress! No matter what the situation is, one thing we humans need to keep going is hope. Positive encouragement that we can solve this problem could help us keep pushing to make that 1.5-degree target. I know there can be a tendency to see this kind of positivity as an invitation to relax, but the alternative, feeling like there is no hope, can lead to apathy.
So, I hope to see some credit and gratitude given to the EU for ratcheting down its emissions requirements, and even some nods to world corporations who have responded to the crisis (and their shareholders) by establishing meaningful metrics for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. The Science Based Targets Initiative is gaining steam quickly, and though the real-world results remain to be seen, more than 2000 companies have made commitments to setting evidence-based targets (note b).
If you’ve read my posts before, you’ll know that what I really want to know is why and how successes have happened. What are the main ingredients we need to spread the success? What types of strategies and partnerships have led to the best progress? The COP has been relatively straightforward in pushing emission reduction strategies and adaptation pathways.
Environmental strategies vary in their effectiveness and their implementation difficulties. Strategies like those from the COP conventions are the most difficult, but have the biggest potential results. Graphic (c) GeoLiteracy, LLC, 2021.
When I think about successful strategies, I try to simplify things by categorizing them by their ease of implementation and their impacts. The solutions developed and implemented by the COP are the prime example of top, right-hand quadrant strategies: they are extraordinarily difficult to negotiate and implement but have extraordinarily big impacts when they are in place.
The Climate Action Tracker Consortium is playing a role in monitoring what actions are ongoing, what we need to rev up, and how much revving is needed (apologies for the pun). They report that world leaders need to phase out coal in electricity generation five times faster, accelerate tree cover gain three times faster, increase low-emission fuel usage twelve times faster, and restore coastal wetlands nearly three times faster.
The common theme here? FASTER.
It can feel overwhelming to those of us who aren’t global leaders and are toiling away in our guest room offices and communities trying to be part of the solution. But these are four clear, actionable areas for focus: (1) coal, (2) trees, (3) low-emission fuel, and (4) coastal wetland restoration. There are so many excellent organizations and individuals working on these four topics (note c).
As long as we can all use proven strategies, we might just get there…
(2) People-first adaptation strategies
“Development, a.k.a. making the world a better place for many, has led us into this mess of unintentionally damaging our home planet. I’ve written before about the noble intentions of the Green Revolution and its unintended consequences. The Green Revolution of the 1960s created both a reduction in world hunger and an increase in chemical contamination (note d). Likewise, the fossil fuels we began burning for heat and energy during the earliest days of our existence allowed us to do some nice things: develop civilizations, stability, education, medicine, and space travel, etc. These developments in technology and agriculture also leave many behind across the globe. As we work together to help each other adapt to a planet with higher sea levels, more severe storms, and extreme summer temperatures, I would like to see more progress around how we put people first, particularly people from less-developed countries who have made their living along the coastlines.
The Cancun Agreements that the COP established in 2010 set out a process for developing countries to pull together adaptation plans. The most recent information from March 2021 shows that 11 years hence, of the 126 countries that intend to develop adaptation plans, only 22 countries have completed initial National Adaptation Plans under this process. Coastal communities are already seeing impacts. We saw the call made in Wales in 2019 to relocate the entire village of Fairbourne due to sea level intrusion (note e).
The impacts from climate change weigh more heavily on indigenous communities around the globe, and these communities provide unique perspectives on solutions. The UN International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) explained this, saying, “…[W]e reiterate the need for recognition of our traditional knowledge, which we have sustainably used and practiced for generations; and the need to integrate such knowledge in global, national and sub-national efforts. This knowledge is our vital contribution to climate change adaptation and mitigation.” (note f)
One of the hints of equitable adaptation in practices will be the degree to which the member parties prioritize engagement at the local level—not just in their National Action Plans, but in the implementation of these plans. I want to see the UN and the parties themselves emphasize solutions that provide people with options and agency.
(3) Hints at very long-term restoration strategies
Certainly, we are in a dire crisis, where we have limited time to make dramatic changes. Thanks to my time in government, I understand a bit about how complicated negotiating can be — this is why multinational agreements fall into that top right quadrant of my strategy 2 x 2. Part of that challenge is that when the COP meets and settles on a new agreement, they will likely face criticism from all angles on returning home. When I worked for the government, some would take this as a badge of honor that we were serving the people — not erring too much on one side or the other of an argument. I’m not sure that’s always the case…
My sympathies typically lie with the environmentalists who lament that not enough progress was made. No doubt, the same will be said after this round of talks. For my part, I anticipate my critique will be that the agreements did not go far enough, but did set some achievable and even ambitious goals that will move the needle. But after we have stopped the bleeding, we need to make sure that the COP process prioritizes restoring the planet. We can’t just stop at not destroying our own living conditions.
The current goals for 2100 are what any of us would describe as long-term goals. But one of many lessons we could and should have learned from Native American colleagues and predecessors on the North American continent is that of considering the seventh generation:
"The Peacemaker taught us about the Seven Generations. He said, when you sit in council for the welfare of the people, you must not think of yourself or of your family, not even of your generation. He said, make your decisions on behalf of the seven generations coming, so that they may enjoy what you have today."
Oren Lyons (Seneca), Faithkeeper, Onondaga Nation
A truly sustainable vision will set us on a course to those seven generations down the line living in harmony with the Earth’s systems. The principle of considering the seven generations coming has driven my view since I first heard this concept as a high school student. That gives us 140 years — where will we be looking at 2160. So, I’m sending the Parties my meditative energy for peace, agreement, and solution-building, and also keeping my fingers crossed.
Regardless of the agreements reached, the progress celebrated and squandered, and the anecdotes coming from one of my favorite cities, those of us with our boots on the ground around the world can continue our work on the smaller, Earth-connected work we’ve set out and organized. We remain an essential part of those success stories.
Notes:
(a) Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich. Oct. 25, 2021. Yes, There Has Been Progress on Climate. No, It’s Not Nearly Enough. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world-climate-pledges-cop26.html
(b) Visit Science Based Targets to learn more about which companies have put more on the line than words by making evidence-based targets: https://sciencebasedtargets.org/
(c) The Climate Action Tracker Consortium takes my kind of approach to reviewing what is actually happening vis a vis corporate and multinational commitments to reducing emissions and land-use changes: https://climateactiontracker.org/
(d) For an interesting discussion and analysis, see John, Daisy A. and Giridhara R. Babu. Feb 22, 2021. Lessons From the Aftermaths of Green Revolution on Food System and Health. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.644559
(e) Tom Wall.May 18, 2019. ‘This is a wake-up call’: the villagers who could be Britain’s first climate refugees. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/this-is-a-wake-up-call-the-villagers-who-could-be-britains-first-climate-refugees
(f) For more on the UN International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, see http://www.iipfcc.org/
Copyright © GeoLiteracy, LLC, 2021, All rights reserved.