UN
Global Climate Action
15
December
2021 | |
High Level Climate Champions
Newsletter | |
Ten years
from now, we will look back at the COP26 summit
as an inflection point in our transformation to
an economy that values health and resilience
over pollution and deforestation.
The Glasgow
Climate Pact did not do enough to set the world
on course to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But
it does keep that prospect within reach. And
it’s thanks to a new convergence of businesses,
investors, cities, regions and countries. They
understand the need to halve emissions, build
resilience and end biodiversity loss within the
2020s and are increasingly confident in our
ability to collectively drive exponential rates
of change.
We saw a
number of examples of that convergence on
display in Glasgow last month.
In the
push
to end deforestation,
141
countries covering 91% of forests agreed to halt and reverse
forest loss and land degradation by 2030. This
is backed
by nearly £14
billion in public and private finance, plus new
tools and initiatives announced in
parallel.
Thirty-three
financial institutions, with US$8.7 trillion in
assets under management, committed to tackle
deforestation driven by agricultural commodities
by 2025. A new online
investment platform provides a first-of-its
kind guidance system to help institutional
investors allocate capital towards nature-based
solutions. The Regen10 initiative will work
with 500 million farmers to ensure that by 2030,
over half the world’s food is produced
sustainably and financed with US$60 billion per
year.
In
finance
for the race to zero emissions and
resilience,
membership of the Glasgow
Financial Alliance for Net Zero now covers US$130
trillion in assets under management - all
committed to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Additional
initiatives will direct investment towards
resilience as well as emission reductions. The
new Global
Resilience Index helps measure the
resilience of countries, companies and supply
chains in developing and emerging economies. The
International Sustainability
Standards Board will create a baseline
for high-quality sustainability disclosure
standards in the public interest. The Scottish
government’s £2
million
(US$2.6 million) contribution to addressing loss
and damage, meanwhile, was quickly backed with
US$3
million from
philanthropies.
And a host of
commitments to accelerate e-bus deployment in
Latin America, renewable energy investment in
the Caribbean and land restoration in Africa
should prove to be the beginning of a wave of
capital being deployed in emerging and
developing economies.
Figuring out
how to create the conditions for the trillions
of dollars needed to drive a resilient
zero-carbon transition in these markets will be
the intellectual challenge of the decade - the
delivery of the much vaunted and a much needed
green recovery plan.
Barbados
Prime Minister Mia Motley called for US$500
billion of additional special drawing rights in
her opening speech. Other potential solutions
include long-term or even perpetual bonds as
issued previously in wartime, debt-for-nature
swaps and catastrophe clauses in multilateral
loans to create more fiscal space for vulnerable
economies, and a deeper and wider application of
insurance
products. | |
That is our immediate challenge for the
year and years ahead.
Emotions coming out of Glasgow are raw and
trust is understandably on shaky ground. Because
while we can see the palpable change already
taking hold of the real economy, the trajectory
of current policies is still unacceptable -
2.7°C - while all the targets in place and under
discussion would lead to 1.8°C, according to
Climate Action Tracker.
Crucially, this optimistic scenario relies
on targets being fulfilled on time, and
ratcheted up to ensure we don’t go beyond 1.5°C.
To do that, we need to ensure that commitments
from businesses, investors, cities and regions
are robust, credible and based on science, and
that progress is consistently reported.
The expert
panel announced by United Nations
Secretary-General António Guterres during
COP26
provides a welcome layer of scrutiny over
corporate commitments to net zero emissions. It
builds the UN Climate Change High-Level
Champions team’s work this past year to enhance
the integrity of commitments and establish
metrics to measure progress under the UN-backed
Race to
Zero and Race to
Resilience campaigns.
This will remain the core of the Champions’
work in the next
five years, starting with Egypt’s COP27
Presidency. Through it all, we will be guided by
the need to protect and improve human health and
resilience. As the Secretary-General said,
“Protecting countries from climate disaster is
not charity. It is solidarity and enlightened
self-interest.” At COP 26, Parties also encouraged the
High-Level Champions to support the
effective participation of non-Party
stakeholders in the global stocktake.
Supporting the global stocktake will be a main
priority of the Champions, in particular,
helping stakeholders in developing countries and
at the regional level to impactfully contribute
and highlight opportunities and evidence of
enhanced and credible action.
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- Renewable
electricity capacity will rise by more than 60%
between 2020 and 2026 to equal the
current capacity of fossil fuel and nuclear
power combined, the International Energy Agency has
forecast. The growth of renewables is
expected to be 50% higher than it was between
2015 and 2020, driven by government policies and
clean energy targets announced around COP26.
That’s exponential change in motion.
- Three big
European power companies have raised their 2030
targets. Enel
aims to have 154GW of renewable and battery
storage capacity in place by then, up from
145GW, and has brought its net zero target
forward to 2040, from 2050. SSE
has cut its targeted Scope 1 and 2 emissions for
2030 to about half of what it previously
planned, while trebling renewables output. RWE
aims to add 2.5GW of renewables capacity per
year out to 2030, up from a previously planned
1.5GW.
- The Panama
Canal Authority’s new Green
Vessel Classification system will include a fee
for greenhouse gas emissions, helping to
accelerate the shift to cleaner shipping. The
system will classify ships based on their energy
efficiency.
- Nigeria has
become the first major developing economy to
commit to set
annual carbon budgets in line with a new
goal for net zero emissions by 2060. Africa’s
biggest oil producer will also set five-year
carbon budgets and set up a climate change
committee, through a law modelled on the UK’s
2008 Climate Change Act.
- IKEA intends
to phase
out plastics
in consumer packaging by 2028. This will
require engineering of new solutions and
collaboration with product development teams and
suppliers.
For more
news from across the Race to Zero and Race to
Resilience communities, check out racetozero.unfccc.int.
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