The progress made since the landmark Paris Agreement back in 2015 is seriously lagging as pointed out by a recently released ‘Production Gap Report 2023: phasing down or phasing up’, produced by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) among others, and first produced in 2019, the Report places a dismal read in this regard as ‘Since it was first quantified in 2019, the global production gap has remained largely unchanged.
Despite encouraging signs of an emerging clean energy transition, the world’s governments still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.
The production gap is the difference between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C. …Many major fossil-fuel-producing governments are still planning near-term increases in coal production and long-term increases in oil and gas production.
In total, government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global production until 2030 for coal, and until at least 2050 for oil and gas, creating increasingly large production gaps over time.’
Given the sorry state of affairs with regard to meeting climate change crisis related goals, a very worried tone was adopted by Secretary General of UN in his remarks at the launch of World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO’s) ‘Provisional state of the global climate 2023’ report whereby he pointed out, as indicated by a Guardian-published article ‘Climate collapse in real time’: UN head António Guterres urges COP28 to act, as follows: “We are living through climate collapse in real time,” UN secretary-general António Guterres has told COP28 delegates in Dubai.
He spoke at the launch of the World Meteorological Organisation’s stark State of the Climate report, which said 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded. “This year has seen communities around the world pounded by fires, floods, and searing temperature – and the impact is devastating,” Guterres said. “Record global heating should send shivers down the spines of world leaders. And it should trigger them to act.”
Moreover, this year’s ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP) meeting – the 28th edition of such meeting that are held annually –starts on November 30 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Regarding the need for world leaders to show serious commitment, the UN Secretary General in the same speech, and as highlighted by the same Guardian-published article, indicated ‘Guterres had a clear message for the 198 countries negotiating at Cop28: “We have the roadmap to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5C and avoid the worst of climate chaos.
But we need leaders to fire the starting gun at Cop28 on a race to keep the 1.5C limit alive, by committing to triple renewables and double energy efficiency, and committing to phase out fossil fuels, with a clear timeframe aligned to the 1.5C limit.”’
The Report itself highlighted the seriousness of the global warming as ‘The global mean near-surface temperature in 2023 (to October) was around 1.40 ± 0.12 °C above the 1850–1900 average. Based on the data to October, it is virtually certain that 2023 will be the warmest year in the 174-year observational record, surpassing the previous joint warmest years, 2016 at 1.29 ± 0.12 °C above the 1850–1900 average and 2020 at 1.27±0.13 °C.
The past nine years, 2015–2023, will be the nine warmest years on record. …The ten-year average 2014–2023 (to October) global temperature is 1.19±0.12°C above the 1850–1900 average, the warmest 10-year period on record.’
Funding the transition to a green economy, on one hand, and making funds available to deal climate change related disasters, on the other, should be among the top agenda at COP28 meeting.
The former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, in his November 22 Project Syndicate (PS) published article ‘How to salvage COP28’ pointed towards a lack of multilateral spirit in this regard, and called for contributions from petrostates, which may push developed countries to contribute.
Brown pointed out: ‘Despite being preceded by a summer of devastating droughts, floods, and wildfires that underscored the need for urgent action, the pre-summit talks on a Loss and Damage Fund to help the world’s most impoverished countries mitigate the effects of climate change have made little progress.
The fund, it was decided, will be housed for four years at the World Bank – but there has been no agreement on the obligations of the historic emitters and, as yet, no substantial flows of cash.
As the president of COP28, the UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber faces the crucial task of breaking the current impasse and delivering on his promise to devise a funding plan to bridge the Global South’s annual $1 trillion shortfall in financing for mitigation and adaptation initiatives. The UAE holds the key to closing the climate financing gap.
Persuading the world’s wealthiest petrostates to pay a 3% voluntary tax on their windfall 2022 revenues from oil and gas exports could raise $25 billion. Such a levy could provide the initial capital required to motivate the developed economies that account for most global greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions to issue guarantees that would enable multilateral development banks (MDBs) to boost investment.’
On the part of the Bretton Woods institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in terms of making available greater fiscal space with developing countries in particular, is to shift away from its austerity emphasis in its policy thinking, to provide greater allocation of special drawing rights (SDRs), and to cancel its surcharge policy, which it charges as fine on late repayments on its non-concessional financing.
The opportunity of COP28 meeting, which is the biggest gathering of countries to deal with the climate change crisis, should be used for policy revisit by the IMF and other multilateral institutions to show, in turn, much-needed greater support with regard to the efforts aimed at dealing with the challenge of climate change crisis.
Moreover, it is important that a more supportive debt policy is adopted by creditor countries and multilateral institutions so that more funds could be transferred for reaching much more climate resilient economies.
As things stand, over-board austerity policies, and a serious lack of climate compensation internalized in debt policy of creditor countries that are otherwise large contributors to climate change crisis have burdened developing countries in terms of fiscal space.
A November 30, Guardian published article ‘New push for debt relief to help developing world fund climate action’ pointed out in this regard: ‘The fight against the climate emergency is being hampered by a debt crisis that involves the world’s poorest countries paying more than 12 times as much to their creditors as they are spending on measures to tackle the impact of global heating, a campaign group has warned.
As the Cop28 meeting opened in the United Arab Emirates, Development Finance International (DFI) said a new round of comprehensive and deep debt cancellation was needed to free up much-needed investment in climate emergency adaptation.
A study of spending in 42 countries by DFI found debt service payments represented 32.7% of the budget in 2023 on average, while responding to the climate crisis stood at 2.5%.’
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
The writer holds a PhD in Economics degree from the University of Barcelona, and has previously worked at the International Monetary Fund. His contact on ‘X’ (formerly ‘Twitter’) is @omerjaved7
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