The Glasgow Climate Convention has been adopted. What’s inside? -National

After more than two weeks of intense negotiations, nearly 200 countries agreed to adopt the “Glasgow Climate Convention” on Saturday. The host of the negotiations, the United Kingdom, stated that the agreement will continue the international hope of avoiding the worst effects of climate change. global warming.

The following are the biggest achievements of this transaction.

Enhance ambition

The agreement recognizes that the commitments made so far by countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming are far from sufficient to prevent the global warming from exceeding the pre-industrial temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

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To solve this problem, it requires governments to strengthen these goals by the end of next year, rather than every five years as previously required.

Failure to set and achieve more stringent emission reduction targets will have huge consequences. Scientists say that a rise of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius will trigger extreme sea level rise and disasters, including severe droughts, huge storms and wildfires, which are much more serious than the disasters the world has already suffered.

Alok Sharma, chairman of the COP26 summit, said: “I think today we can safely say that we have kept 1.5 (degrees Celsius) within reach.” “But its pulse is weak. Only by keeping our promises can we survive.”

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Targeting fossil fuels

For the first time, the agreement includes language that requires countries to reduce their dependence on coal and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. These measures will target what scientists say are the main drivers of man-made climate change.

However, the wording is controversial.

Just before the passage of the Glasgow agreement, India asked the agreement to call on countries to “gradually reduce” rather than “phasing out” the unabated coal. This small change in wording caused a lot of anxiety in the plenary hall, but the delegations agreed to the request to save the deal.

At the same time, the wording of the transaction regarding “inefficient subsidies” retains the wording of “phasing out”.

The question of how to define “increasing without diminishing” and “inefficiency” still exists.

Paid to poor and fragile countries

The agreement has made some progress on the requirements of poor and fragile countries, and rich countries bear the most responsibility for emissions.

For example, the agreement “urges developed country parties to at least double their collective supply of climate funding for adaptation to developing country parties from 2019 levels by 2025.”

It also mentioned the so-called “loss and damage” on the cover of the agreement for the first time. Loss and damage refer to the costs that some countries have already faced as a result of climate change, and these countries have been hoping to be paid to help fight climate change for many years.

However, according to the agreement, developed countries basically only agreed to continue discussing this topic. We will see where this will go.

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Global carbon market rules

The negotiators also reached a deal to set rules for the carbon market, potentially releasing trillions of dollars to protect forests, build renewable energy facilities and other projects to combat climate change.

Companies and countries with extensive forest coverage have pushed for a strong deal in the Glasgow government-led carbon market, hoping to also legitimize the fast-growing global voluntary offset market.

According to the agreement, some measures will be implemented to ensure that credits are not double-counted under national emission targets, but that bilateral trade between countries will not be taxed to help finance climate adaptation-a core need for less developed countries.

The negotiators also reached a compromise and set a deadline, and credits issued before 2013 will not be carried forward. The purpose of this is to ensure that too much old credit does not flood the market and encourage purchases rather than new emissions reductions.

Side transaction

There are also some notable side transactions. The United States and the European Union took the lead in launching a global methane emission reduction initiative, in which about 100 countries pledged to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels.

The United States and China, the two largest carbon emitters in the world, also announced a joint statement on cooperation on climate change measures. This agreement has convinced observers that Beijing intends to accelerate its efforts to combat global warming after a long period of silence.

Companies and investors have also made a series of voluntary commitments to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles, decarbonize air travel, protect forests and ensure more sustainable investments.