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  • They’re talking, but a climate divide between Beijing and Washington remains

    They’re talking, but a climate divide between Beijing and Washington remains

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    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

    Last week’s surprise deal between China and the United States may provide a boost to the climate talks in Dubai — but the two powers remain at odds on tough questions such as how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations.

    The world’s top two drivers of climate change are also divided by a thicket of disagreements on trade, security, human rights and economic competition.

    The good news is that Washington and Beijing are talking to each other again and restarting some of their technical cooperation on climate issues, after a yearlong freeze. That may still not be enough to get nearly 200 nations to commit to far greater climate action at the talks that begin Nov. 30.

    The two superpowers’ latest detente creates the right “mood music” for the summit, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G. “But it still is not saying that the world’s two largest economies and two largest emitters are fully committed to the scale and pace of reductions that are needed.”

    The deal, announced after a meeting this month between U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, produced an agreement to commit to a series of actions to limit climate pollution. Those include accelerating the shift to renewable energy and widening the variety of heat-trapping gases they will address in their next round of climate targets.

    U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping endorsed that type of cooperation after a meeting in California on Wednesday, saying they “welcomed” positive discussions on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during this decade, as well as “common approaches” toward a successful climate summit. Biden said he would work with China to address climate finance in developing countries, a major source of friction for the U.S.

    “Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” said Xi ahead of his bilateral with Biden.

    But the deal leaves some big issues unaddressed, including specific measures for ending their reliance on fossil fuels, the main contributor to global warming. And the two countries are a long way from the days when a surprise U.S.-Chinese agreement to cooperate on climate change had the power to land a landmark global pact.

    That puts the nations in a dramatically different place than in 2014, when Xi and then-President Barack Obama made a historic pledge to jointly cut their planet-warming pollution, paving the way for the landmark Paris Agreement to land in 2015.

    Even a surprise joint deal between the two nations in 2021 failed to ease friction, with China emerging at the last minute to oppose language calling for a phase-out of coal power. The summit ended with a less ambitious “phase-down.”

    A year later, a visit to Taiwan by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi angered Beijing so much that Xi’s government canceled dialogue with the United States on a host of issues, including climate change. China, which claims that Taiwan is part of its territory, alleged that the visit had undermined its sovereignty.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks after receiving the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honour | Handout/Getty Image

    The two countries’ struggles to find comity have come at the worst possible moment — at a time when rapid action is crucial to preventing climate catastrophe. A growing number of factors has threatened to widen the U.S.-Chinese wedge further, including their competition for supremacy in the market for clean energy.

    Two nations at odds

    While the U.S. has contributed more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other nation during the past 150 years, China is now the world’s largest climate polluter — though not on a per capita basis — and it will need to stop building new coal-fired power for the world to stand a chance of limiting rising temperatures.

    The recent agreement hints at that possibility by stating that more renewables would enable reductions in the generation of oil, gas and coal, helping China peak its emissions ahead of its current targets.

    The challenge will be bridging the countries’ diverging approaches to climate issues.

    The Biden administration is urging a rapid end to coal-fired power, which is waning in the U.S., even as it permits more oil drilling and ramps up exports of natural gas — much of it destined for Asia.

    At the same time, it wants the United States to claim a larger role in the clean energy manufacturing industry that China now dominates, and is seeking to loosen China’s stranglehold on supply chains for products such as solar panels, electric cars and the minerals that go into them. It’s also pressuring Beijing to contribute to U.N. climate funds, saying China’s historic status as a developing country no longer shields it from its responsibility to pay.

    China sees the U.S. position as a direct challenge to its economic growth and energy security.

    Beijing wants to protect the use of coal and defend developing countries’ access to fossil fuels. It has also backed emerging economies’ demands that rich countries pay more to help them deploy clean energy and adapt to the effects of a warmer world. China says it already helps developing countries through South-South cooperation and points to a clause in the 2015 Paris Agreement that says developed countries should lead on climate finance.

    Hanging over the talks is also the prospect of a change of administration in the U.S., and continued efforts by Republicans to vilify Beijing and accuse the Biden administration of supporting Chinese companies through its climate policies and investments. And as China’s response to Pelosi’s trip underscored, climate cooperation remains hostage to other tensions in the two countries’ relationship, a dynamic likely to heighten in the coming year as both Taiwan and the U.S. hold presidential elections.

    One challenge is that China doesn’t seem to see much to gain from offering more ambitious climate actions amid worsening relations with other countries, said Kevin Tu, a non-resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and an adjunct professor at the School of Environment at Beijing Normal University.

    “In the past several years, China has voluntarily upgraded its climate ambitions a few times amid rising geopolitical tensions,” Tu said, pointing to its 2020 pledge to peak and then zero out its emissions. “So China does not necessarily have very strong incentive to further upgrade its climate ambition.”

    The divide between the two nations has created a dilemma for some small island nations that often walk a fine line between negotiating alongside China at climate talks while pushing for more action to scale back fossil fuels.

    The U.S. and China remain at odds on how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

    “The U.S. is trying to drag everyone to talk about an immediate coal phase-out,” Ralph Regenvanu, climate minister for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, said during a recent call with reporters, calling the effort a “U.S.-versus-China thing.”

    “But we also need to talk about no more oil or gas as well,” he added.

    Operating on its own terms

    The dynamic between China and the U.S. will either drag down or bolster the ambitions of countries updating their national climate pledges, a process that begins at the close of COP28. Nations are already woefully behind cuts needed to hit the goals they laid out in Paris.

    China’s new 10-year targets will be crucial for meeting those marks, given that China accounts for close to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and that it plans to build dozens of coal-fired power plants in the coming years. The U.S., and many other countries, will be looking for greater commitments from China — whether that’s modifying what it means by phasing down coal or setting more stringent targets.

    China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and zero them out before 2060, a decade later than the United States has promised to reach net-zero. Beijing is unlikely to accelerate that timeline, in part because — analysts say — its philosophy is fundamentally different from that of the U.S.: underpromise and overdeliver.

    Even without committing to more action, China’s massive investments in low-carbon energy installations — twice that of the United States — may inadvertently help the country achieve its peaking target early, some analysts say.

    A complicated picture

    If the Trump years drove China further from America, the global pandemic and resulting economic slowdown that started during his final year didn’t bring it closer. And the energy crunch stemming from Russia’s war with Ukraine cemented China’s drive for reliable energy to meet the rising needs of its 1.4 billion people. That created a coal boom.

    Meanwhile, China heavily subsidized the expansion of wind, solar and electric vehicle production. Its clean energy supply chain dominance has lowered the global costs for those technologies but drawn scorn from the U.S. as it tries to rebuild its own domestic manufacturing base.

    China has turned more combative in response. Rather than work with the U.S. to make joint announcements on climate action, Xi has made clear that China’s climate policy won’t be dictated by others. At G20 meetings, China has aligned with Saudi Arabia and Russia in opposing language aimed at phasing out fossil fuels.

    “At the end of the day, it’s harder to make a claim that China needs the U.S. and it’s harder to make the claim that the U.S. can rely on China,” said Cory Combs, a senior analyst at policy consulting firm Trivium China.

    Wealthy countries’ inability to deliver promised climate aid to vulnerable countries hasn’t helped. While China remains among the bloc of developing nations in calling for more action on climate finance, it also points to the investments it’s making in the Global South through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and bilateral aid. 

    A foreign diplomat who asked for anonymity to speak openly said China has resisted pressure to contribute money to a climate fund that would help developing countries rebuild after climate disasters and would likely push back against a focus on its continued build out of coal-fired power plants.

    US climate envoy John Kerry sits next to China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

    “Anything that would signal that they would need to do more is something that gets blocked,” the person said.

    China did release a plan earlier this month to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse methane, delivering on a promise it had made in a joint declaration with the U.S. at climate talks in 2021. But it has still not signed onto a global methane pledge led by the U.S. and the European Union.

    All that amounts to a complicated picture for the U.S.-Chinese relationship and its broader impact on global climate outcomes.

    “The U.S.-China talks will help stabilize the politics when countries meet in the UAE, but critical issues such as a fossil fuel phase-out still require much [further] political efforts,” said Li Shuo, incoming director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

    “It’s very much about setting a floor,” and the talks in Dubai still need to build out from there, Shuo added.

    He argues in a recent paper that China will subscribe to targets it sees as achievable and will continue to side with developing countries on climate finance. Chinese government officials are cautious about what they’re willing to commit to internationally, which sometimes serves as a disincentive for them to be more ambitious, he said.

    The calculation is likely to be different for Biden’s team, who “want a headline that the world agrees to push China,” said David Waskow, who leads the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.

    Not impossible

    The power of engagement can’t be completely written off, and in the past it has proven to have a positive effect on the U.S.-China relationship.

    “[Climate] sort of was a positive pillar in the relationship,” said Todd Stern, Obama’s former chief climate negotiator. “And it came to be a thing where when the two sides have come to get together, it was like, ‘What can we get done on climate?’”

    Engagement with China at the state and local level and among academics and research institutes has potential — in large part because it’s less political, said Joanna Lewis, a professor at Georgetown University who closely tracks China’s climate change approach.

    There could also be opportunities to separate climate from broader bilateral tensions.

    “I do feel like there’s that willingness to say, ‘We recognize our roles, we recognize our ability to have that catalytic effect on the international community’s actions,’” said Nate Hultman, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability and a former senior adviser to Kerry. “It doesn’t solve all the world’s issues going into the COP, but it gives a really strong boost to international discussions around what we know we need to do.”

    Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman reported, and Phelim Kine contributed reporting, from Washington, D.C.

    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM. The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.

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  • Anti-green backlash hovers over COP climate talks

    Anti-green backlash hovers over COP climate talks

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    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

    LONDON — World leaders will touch down in Dubai next week for a climate change conference they’re billing yet again as the final off-ramp before catastrophe. But war, money squabbles and political headaches back home are already crowding the fate of the planet from the agenda.

    The breakdown of the Earth’s climate has for decades been the most important yet somehow least urgent of global crises, shoved to one side the moment politicians face a seemingly more acute problem. Even in 2023 — almost certainly the most scorching year in recorded history, with temperatures spawning catastrophic floods, wildfires and heat waves across the globe — the climate effort faces a bewildering array of distractions, headwinds and dismal prospects.

    “The plans to achieve net zero are increasingly under attack,” former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who set her country’s goal of reaching climate neutrality into law, told POLITICO.

    The best outcome for the climate from the 13-day meeting, which is known as COP28 and opens Nov. 30, would be an unambiguous statement from almost 200 countries on how they intend to hasten their plans to cut fossil fuels, alongside new commitments from the richest nations on the planet to assist the poorest.

    But the odds against that happening are rising. Instead, the U.S. and its European allies are still struggling to cement a fragile deal with developing countries about an international climate-aid fund that had been hailed as the historic accomplishment of last year’s summit. Meanwhile, a populist backlash against the costs of green policies has governments across Europe pulling back — a reverse wave that would become an American-led tsunami if Donald Trump recaptures the White House next year.

    And across the developing world, the rise of energy and food prices stoked by the pandemic and the Ukraine war has caused inflation and debt to spiral, heightening the domestic pressure on climate-minded governments to spend their money on their most acute needs first.

    Even U.S. President Joe Biden, whose 2022 climate law kicked off a boom of clean-energy projects in the U.S., has endorsed fossil fuel drilling and pipeline projects under pressure to ease voter unease about rising fuel costs.

    Add to all that the newest Mideast war that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

    On the upside, investment in much of the green economy is also surging. Analysts are cautiously opining that China’s emissions may have begun to decline, several years ahead of Beijing’s schedule. And the Paris-based International Energy Agency projects that global fossil fuel demand could peak this decade, with coal use plummeting and oil and gas plateauing afterward. Spurring these trends is a competition among powers such as China, the United States, India and the European Union to build out and dominate clean-energy industries.

    But the fossil fuel industry is betting against a global shift to green, instead investing its profits from the energy crisis into plans for long-term expansion of its core business.

    The air of gloom among many supporters of global climate action is hard to miss, as is the sense that global warming will not be the sole topic on leaders’ minds when they huddle in back rooms.

    “It’s getting away from us,” Tim Benton, director of the Chatham House environment and society center, said during a markedly downbeat discussion among climate experts at the think tank’s lodgings on St James’ Square in London earlier this month. “Where is the political space to drive the ambition that we need?”

    Fog of war

    The most acute distraction from global climate work is the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The conflagration is among many considerations the White House is weighing in Biden’s likely decision not to attend the summit, one senior administration official told POLITICO this month. Other leaders are also reconsidering their schedules, said one senior government official from a European country, who was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive diplomacy of the conference.

    The war is also likely to push its way onto the climate summit’s unofficial agenda: Leaders of big Western powers who are attending will spend at least some of their diplomatically precious face-time with Middle East leaders discussing — not climate — but the regional security situation, said two people familiar with the planning for COP28 who could not be named for similar reasons. According to a preliminary list circulated by the United Arab Emirates, Israeli President Isaac Herzog or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend the talks.

    A threat even exists that the conference could be canceled or relocated, should a wider regional conflict develop, Benton said. 

    The UAE’s COP28 presidency isn’t talking about that, at least publicly. “We look forward to hosting a safe, inclusive COP beginning at the end of November,” said a spokesperson in an emailed statement. But the strained global relations have already thrown the location of next years’ COP29 talks into doubt because Russia has blocked any EU country from hosting the conference, which is due to be held in eastern or central Europe.

    The upshot is that the bubble of global cooperation that landed the Paris climate agreement in 2015 has burst. “We have a lot of more divisive narratives now,” Laurence Tubiana, the European Climate Foundation CEO who was one of the drafters of the Paris deal, said at the same meeting at Chatham House.

    The Ukraine war and tensions between the U.S. and China in particular have widened the gap between developed and developing countries, Benton told POLITICO in an email. 

    Now, “the Hamas-Israel war potentially creates significant new fault lines between the Arab world and many Western countries that are perceived to be more pro-Israeli,” he said. “The geopolitical tensions arising from the war could create leverage that enables petrostates (many of which are Muslim) to shore up the status quo.”

    Add to that the as yet unknown impact on already high fossil fuel commodity prices, said Kalee Kreider, president of the Ridgely Walsh public affairs consultancy and a former adviser to U.S. Vice President Al Gore. “Volatility doesn’t usually help raise ambition.”

    The Biden administration’s decisions to approve a tranche of new fossil fuel production and export projects will undermine U.S. diplomacy at COP28, said Ed Markey, a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

    “You can’t preach temperance from a barstool, and the United States is running a long tab,” he said.

    U.N. climate talks veterans have seen this program before. “No year over the past three decades has been free of political, economic or health challenges,” said former U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa, who now heads the consulting firm onepoint5. “We simply can’t wait for the perfect conditions to address climate change. Time is a luxury we no longer have — if we ever did.”

    The EU backlash

    Before the Mideast’s newest shock to the global energy system, the war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s energy dependence on Russia — and initially galvanized the EU to accelerate efforts to roll out cleaner alternatives.

    But in the past year, persistent inflation has worn away that zeal. Businesses and citizens worry about anything that might add to the financial strain, and this has frayed a consensus on climate change that had held for the past four years among left, center and center right parties across much of the 27-country bloc.

    In recent months, conservative members of the European Parliament have attacked several EU green proposals as excessive, framing themselves as pragmatic environmentalists ahead of Europe-wide elections next year.  Reinvigorated far-right parties across the bloc are also using the green agenda to attack more mainstream parties, a trend that is spooking the center. 

    Germany’s government was almost brought down this year by a law that sought to ban gas boilers — with the Greens-led economy ministry retreating to a compromise. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has joined a growing chorus agitating for a “regulatory pause” on green legislation.

    If Europe’s struggles emerge at COP28, the ripple effect could be global, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank. 

    The “EU has established itself as the global laboratory for climate neutrality,” he said. “But now it needs to deliver on the experiment, or the world (which is closely watching) will assume this just does not work. And that would be a disaster for all of us.”

    U.K. retreats

    The world is also watching the former EU member that stakes a claim to be the climate leader of the G7: the U.K.

    London has prided itself on its green credentials ever since former Prime Minister May enacted a 2019 law calling for net zero by 2050 — making her the first leader of a major economy to do so.

    According to May’s successor Boris Johnson, net zero was good for the planet, good for voters, good for the economy. But under current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the messaging has transformed. Net zero remains the target — but it comes with a “burden” on working people.

    In a major speech this fall, Sunak rolled back plans to ban new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030, bringing the U.K. into line with the EU’s 2035 date. With half an eye on Germany’s travails, he said millions of households would be exempted from the gas boiler ban expected in 2035.

    In making his arguments for a “pragmatic” approach to net zero, Sunak frequently draws on the talking points of net zero-skeptics. Why should the citizens of the U.K., which within its own borders produces just 1 percent of global emissions, “sacrifice even more than others?” 

    The danger, said one EU climate diplomat — granted anonymity to discuss domestic policy of an allied country — was that other countries around the COP28 negotiating table would hear that kind of rhetoric from a capital that had led the world — and repurpose it to make their own excuses.

    Sunak’s predecessor May sees similar risks.

    “Nearly a third of all global emissions originate from countries with territorial emissions of 1 per cent or less,” May said. “If we all slammed on the brakes, it would make our net zero aspirations impossible to achieve.”

    Trump’s back

    The U.S., the largest producer of industrial carbon pollution in modern history, has been a weathervane on climate depending on who controls its governing branches.

    When Republicans regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, it created a major drag on Biden’s promise to provide $11.4 billion in annual global climate finance by 2024.

    Securing this money and much more, developing countries say, is vital to any progress on global climate goals at COP28. Last year, on the back of the pandemic and the energy price spike, global debt soared to a record $92 trillion. This cripples developing countries’ ability to build clean energy and defend themselves against — or recover from — hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires.

    Even when the money is there, the politics can be challenging. Multibillion-dollar clean energy partnerships that the G7 has pursued to shift South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and India off coal power are struggling to gain acceptance from the recipients.

    Yet even more dire consequences await if Trump wins back the presidency next year. 

    A Trump victory would put the world’s largest economy a pen stroke away from quitting the Paris Agreement all over again — or, even more drastically, abandoning the entire international regime of climate pacts and summits. The thought is already sending a chill: Negotiations over a fund for poorer countries’ climate losses and damage, which Republicans oppose, include talks on how to make its language “change-of-government-proof” in light of a potential Trump victory, said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a bloc of island states.

    More concretely for reining in planet-heating gases, Trump would be in position to approve legislation eliminating all or part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s signature climate law included $370 billion in incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles and other carbon-cutting efforts – though the actual spending is likely to soar even higher due to widespread interest in its programs and subsidies – and accounts for a bulk of projected U.S. emissions cuts this decade.

    Trump’s views on this kind of spending are no mystery: His first White House budget director dismissed climate programs as “a waste of your money,” and Trump himself promised last summer to “terminate these Green New Deal atrocities on Day One.”

    House Republicans have attempted to claw back parts of Biden’s climate law several times. That’s merely a political messaging effort for now, thanks to a Democrat-held Senate and a sure veto from Biden, but the prospects flip if the GOP gains full control of Congress and White House.

    Under a plan hatched by Tubiana and backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, countries would in the future log their state and local government climate plans with the U.N., in an attempt to undergird the entire system against a second Republican blitzkrieg.

    The U.S. isn’t the only place where climate action is on the ballot, Benton told the conference at Chatham House on Nov. 1.

    News on Sunday that Argentina had elected as president right-wing populist Javier Milei — a Trump-like libertarian — raised the prospect of a major Latin American economy walking away from the Paris Agreement, either by formally withdrawing or by reneging on its promises.

    Elections are also scheduled in 2024 for the EU, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Russia, and possibly the U.K. 

    “A quarter of the world’s population is facing elections in the next nine months,” he said. “If everyone goes to the right and populism becomes the order of the day … then I won’t hold out high hopes for Paris.”

    Zack Colman reported from Washington, D.C. Suzanne Lynch also contributed reporting from Brussels.

    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM. The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.

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  • US-EU unity ruptures over climate damage payments

    US-EU unity ruptures over climate damage payments

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    A Brussels promise has exposed the yawning gap between the United States and European Union over payments to climate-ravaged countries — just ahead of a major climate summit.

    The vow came Monday from Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner, who said the EU was “ready to announce a substantial financial contribution” for a new climate damage fund. 

    The pronouncement flew in the face of the more cautious U.S. approach — and will inevitably raise pressure on Washington and other wealthy governments to follow suit. 

    The emerging divide reflects how contentious the debate is over a fund to support countries scarred by extreme weather and other global warming harms, often referred to as “loss and damage.” Even settling on a framework for the fund faced challenges until climate negotiators reached a fragile agreement earlier this month in Abu Dhabi. 

    The dispute has often pitted rich, heavy-emitting countries like the U.S. and the EU against the developing countries facing the impacts of those emissions. But long-simmering differences between Brussels and Washington are now also bubbling over as the new fund takes shape — especially as calls mount for wealthy countries to pay up.

    In Abu Dhabi, Germany’s lead negotiator went out of her way to clarify that even though she was speaking for a group of developed countries, “our constituency is not one single group with one single voice.” 

    That transatlantic divide risks complicating rich countries’ efforts to get developing nations to sign up for more ambitious climate action at the COP28 climate summit starting later this month in Dubai. Cracks in the EU-U.S. alliance will make negotiating against the likes of China and Saudi Arabia trickier, and Washington’s reluctance to pay is impeding efforts to build trust between the poorest and most vulnerable nations and those with the resources to help them. 

    U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told an event on Friday he was “confident” that Washington would contribute “several millions,” though it’s unclear when it could be delivered. The Biden administration has struggled to get finance for international climate efforts through Congress and tends to take a more hardline stance on climate disaster funding — for both strategic and ideological reasons. 

    The EU is no longer waiting around. 

    “We, the EU, are not only prepared to lead, but we are capable of showing leadership,” a senior EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the matter, told POLITICO. 

    Differing philosophies 

    The divide stems partly from a different sense of the moral responsibility borne by the U.S. and EU. 

    As the climate talks earlier this month concluded in Abu Dhabi, European representatives reluctantly supported the framework, while the U.S. continued to press for changes even after the meeting had ended, claiming the adopted text was “not a consensus document.” 

    A house destroyed by the sea on the island of Carti Sugtupu, in the Indigenous Guna Yala Comarca, Panama | Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images

    A State Department official told POLITICO the U.S. “did not consider it sufficiently clear what the members were being asked to agree to, particularly on the issue of sources of funding.” The text has now been clarified, the official added, putting the U.S. in a position to welcome the negotiators’ recommendations. 

    “So I hope we’re going to avoid an implosion in Dubai because we now have agreed … on the way in which we can manage this fund,” Kerry said on Friday. 

    But the tiff over punctuation — the Americans were largely concerned about the placement of a comma they argued could indicate developed countries had a particular responsibility to pay — is another sign of the divergence between Washington and Brussels. 

    The EU and the U.S. are aligned on core issues: Both want a fund for vulnerable countries that doesn’t pin a unique responsibility on developed countries to provide the cash. 

    But Europe has been more comfortable with a document calling on wealthy nations to take the lead on money. “These distinctions can cut in both directions — if we’re taking the lead, then we’re expecting someone else to follow,” the EU diplomat said. 

    The EU’s more relaxed approach stands in contrast to Washington’s obsession with legally watertight language. The U.S. worries that any suggestion that rich polluting nations might have a responsibility toward countries hit by climate disasters could lead to legal obligations to pay compensation. 

    “As always, the European team is more flexible, and they’re the first who are ready to invest,” said Gayane Gabrielyan, Armenia’s deputy environment minister, who participated in the Abu Dhabi talks.

    America’s political trump card

    Cash-strapped countries argue such financial pledges are the incentive they need to make their own emissions-slashing commitments.

    “You can’t ask developing countries to have a faster, greater green transformation than any developed country ever did and then on the other side say, ‘Oh, well we feel no obligation, and feel no responsibility for their climate loss and damage,’” said Avinash Persaud, climate envoy of Barbados, who participated in the talks in Abu Dhabi. 

    “I think the Europeans get that but our American partners don’t always appear to — or local politics trumps that,” he added. 

    Those politics are quite tricky for the U.S., however. President Joe Biden must get international climate finance pledges through Congress — a momentous challenge given the Republican-controlled House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, not to mention a potential looming government shutdown that would stall all funding bills. 

    Officials bring that challenge with them into climate finance negotiations, observers say. 

    President Joe Biden must get international climate finance pledges through Congress | Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

    “They try to create funds or agreements that are going to be more palatable in Congress,” said Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA. “But historically, the results of that has been the U.S. has just consistently watered stuff down and has not been a reliable partner in joining agreements or contributing funds.”

    That’s true for all kinds of climate funding, not just loss and damage. When Germany hosted a replenishment conference of the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund last month, Berlin put forward a record €2 billion, with other EU countries also contributing. The U.S. pledged nothing. 

    In another interview on Friday in Singapore, Kerry promised that Washington would “make a good-faith effort” when it comes to helping victims of climate disasters. 

    “But we need everyone to take part — it can’t be just a few countries, we need everyone to help to the degree that they can,” he said. 

    Leading or ceding leverage?

    Some see the Europeans’ flexibility as a strategic mistake. 

    A former U.K. official, granted anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive diplomatic matter, said that at last year’s COP27 in Egypt, the European Commission team undermined the position of other wealthy countries by backing a climate disaster fund before developing countries had agreed to cut emissions in return.

    The EU appears to have taken that message on board this year, with Hoekstra strongly implying Brussels will use climate disaster funding as a bargaining chip to obtain emission-cutting concessions.

    If countries make enough pledges at COP28 to slash emissions, the new climate disaster fund “can be launched in Dubai, with the first pledges, too,” he said in a speech in Kenya last week. “Because if we don’t cut greenhouse gas emissions, no amount of money will be able to pay [for] the damages.” 

    But the EU is already gathering money. A senior European climate negotiator, who could only speak on condition of anonymity because of their sensitive position, said Hoekstra had been touring European capitals asking them to prepare contributions, something the Commission would not confirm but did not deny. 

    No official POLITICO spoke to would say on the record whether and how much their country would pay into the fund — except for Denmark’s climate minister Dan Jørgensen. 

    “We were the first country to pledge money last year … and we will also be ready to do that again now,” Jørgensen told POLITICO and four European newspapers last week, promising a “generous pledge.” 

    Asked for more details later, his office asked POLITICO not to publish the comment — implying that the minister should not have revealed Denmark’s intention to pay just yet. 

    Still, the EU let the cat out of the bag on Monday with its promise to pay into the fund, even as it declined to detail how much. The precise amount, a diplomat from a European country represented at the recent loss and damage talks, was the “big fat carrot” in the COP28 negotiations.  

    But asked if Brussels was also bringing a stick to Dubai, the diplomat conceded: “I think the Americans are the ones swinging a stick.” 

    Abby Wallace contributed reporting. 

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    Zia Weise, Sara Schonhardt and Karl Mathiesen

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  • King Charles to attend COP28

    King Charles to attend COP28

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    King Charles III will attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai next month, Buckingham Palace confirmed.

    The King — a longstanding advocate of bolder action to combat climate change — will deliver the opening address at the World Climate Action Summit, the gathering of global leaders which will open the two-week annual conference.

    It will be the first time he has attended a COP summit as King. Having played a major diplomatic role as Prince of Wales at the U.K.-hosted COP26 in 2021, there was confusion last year as to whether he would attend the COP27 summit in Egypt. Downing Street eventually confirmed that he would not go as it was not the “right occasion.”

    This year, the King will attend “at the invitation” of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and “at the request” of the U.K. government, Buckingham Palace said.

    He will speak at the summit on Friday 1 December and will “take the opportunity to have meetings with regional leaders” ahead of the event, according to a statement from the palace.

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    Charlie Cooper

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  • US, EU blamed as climate fund talks break down over World Bank push

    US, EU blamed as climate fund talks break down over World Bank push

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    Recriminations were spreading Saturday morning after the failure of talks on the creation of a new fund to help vulnerable countries rebuild from climate disasters.

    During fraught talks that were partially webcast, negotiators from developing countries blamed the U.S. in particular for insisting on housing the proposed fund in the World Bank, an institution dominated by highly developed economies.

    “If wealthy nations do not come to the next meeting prepared to let go of this unrealistic proposal, meet their international obligations, and set up a stand-alone, rights-based and resourced fund, they might as well not show up at all,” said Lien Vandamme, an observer at the talks for the Center for International Environmental Law.

    Vandamme accused the EU, which also backs the idea of the World Bank as host, of hiding behind the U.S. 

    A European Commission spokesperson said the 24-member committee of government officials from rich and poor countries tasked with designing the fund “was unable to complete its work this week but made some good progress in certain areas, and the EU remains committed to taking the work forward.”

    The headquartering of the fund was among a host of contentious issues that were left unresolved after this week’s meeting in Egypt, which was supposed to be the final round of technical talks on setting up a so-called loss and damage fund.

    Developed and developing parties both expressed disappointment in the final hours of the talks, which wrapped up in the early hours of Saturday. 

    “What message do I take back home? There is nothing on the table. No recommendations,” said Pakistani negotiator Ali Waqas Malik. German negotiator Heike Henn pleaded with colleagues to not give up, saying: “We are failing the process, the mandate, people, expectations.”

    The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Another meeting is now likely to be scheduled for early November in Abu Dhabi to try to find a deal before the world’s governments gather in the United Arab Emirates for the COP28 global climate talks, which start on November 30.

    Earlier in the meeting, the Emirati president of the COP28 talks, Sultan al-Jaber, urged governments to make early financial contributions to the fund to demonstrate good faith.

    “I don’t want this to be an empty bank account. This committee has to deliver recommendations. The COP has to make the decision of activating the fund,” he said.

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    Karl Mathiesen and Zia Weise

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  • Italy’s Meloni plans a geopolitical Queen’s Gambit

    Italy’s Meloni plans a geopolitical Queen’s Gambit

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    Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and adviser at Gallos Technologies and a regular columnist for POLITICO.

    In the 17th century, the Italian chess player Gioachino Greco created the world’s first chess handbook. One of the moves he recorded was the Queen’s Gambit, an ingenious opening in three parts.  

    Almost exactly 300 years later, his compatriot Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is about to launch a Queen’s Gambit of her own — in foreign policy. And much like Greco’s move, it involves several interlinked steps that, if executed successfully, could yield great dividends.  

    When Greco began his pioneering manuscript detailing entire chess matches, he was already considered one of the world’s best players. By contrast, Meloni was hardly a household name outside of Italy before leading her party to victory in the country’s parliamentary elections last year.  

    The world didn’t really know what to expect — especially when it came to foreign policy. Since then, however, Meloni has been surefooted on issues ranging from Ukraine to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And when heads of state and government gather to address the world’s most pressing challenges at the United Nations General Assembly this week, the Italian prime minister will outline her Queen’s Gambit.  

    Meloni’s move involves several interconnected steps that deal with the national-security risks posed by climate change, strengthening the Euro-Atlantic alliance and helping African countries become more stable and secure. “Meloni has recently talked a great deal about the need to look at the entire global chessboard without losing sight of any area or piece,” her foreign policy advisor Ambassador Francesco Taló told me.  

    “For example, by moving the queen toward the East, we risk not noticing the bishop coming from Africa,” he added. 

    One could argue that the urgent issues we currently face are so interlinked, every head of government needs to develop a Queen’s Gambit. “In today’s situation, you can’t have vertical policy lines,” noted Taló, who previously served as Italy’s ambassador to NATO. “So many things are interconnected.”  

    But the need for such a strategy is particularly obvious in Italy, which sits at the nexus of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and is a key participant in the globalized economy — as well as a similarly crucial participant in the West’s defense against Russia and its support of Ukraine. Then add to that the serious disruption coming every country’s way as artificial intelligence and climate change inexorably advance. 

    These real-world challenges are clearly not as neat as a chessboard, and the foreign policy moves have to be executed simultaneously rather than sequentially — but the intricacy of the strategy is the same.   

    Take climate change: To protect its astonishing number of UNESCO World Heritage sites — not to mention its famous viniculture and agriculture — Italy needs carbon reductions not just at home but around the world. Of course, far more than Italy’s stunning sites and food hangs in the balance here — without a significant reduction in carbon emissions, sections of Africa risk becoming uninhabitable, which would force even more people to make their way to Europe via Italy.  

    During the first half of this year, over 73,000 boat migrants reached the country — more than double the number from all of 2021. And if the world exceeds the crucial 1.5-degree average temperature increase, the number of those having to flee their homes will be many times that.

    Over 73,000 boat migrants reached the shores of Italy in the first half of 2023 | Antonio Masiello/Getty Images

    Just last week, thousands of Libyans died and thousands of others were left homeless when Storm Daniel pounded the country and collapsed a pair of dams. Meloni had phone calls with Libya’s two rival prime ministers, one after the other, the day after the disaster struck, and committed to assisting the country.  

    The U.N. Climate Change Summit COP28, which will be held in Dubai this December, will face this intricate task of addressing climate change even as the global economy worsens. Ultimately, however, the West needs to slash its carbon emissions — as does China. And in order to get results, the two sides need to work together closely, even as geopolitical tensions increase.  

    But these are not the only issues the Queen’s Gambit must address.  

    Like many other countries, Italy needs to slash its commercial links with Russia and reduce its dependence on China too. Meloni has already decided that Italy will leave China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country has managed to more than halve its Russian gas imports. The new electricity connector that’s being built between Tunisia and Sicily represents the flipside of this strategy — a new focus on expanded and multilayered collaboration with countries in Italy’s neighborhood.  

    This EU-financed connector will create jobs in Tunisia, help Italy reduce its dependence on Russian gas, and any surplus will go to Europe. And in the meantime, Meloni — joined by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte — has also negotiated a migration agreement with Tunisia, which was signed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in July. 

    The Italian prime minister is, in fact, trying to create the kind of mutually beneficial relationship that has so often eluded European and African countries. That they would benefit from teaming up on climate change and better commercial links is clear — and Meloni believes Italy can also help make the case for Ukraine with some African leaders who might be best suited to propose ways out of the war.  

    “Italy is trying to engage not just with Ukraine’s traditional supporters but with other countries that are willing to propose solutions as well,” Taló said. “After all, any country can be assaulted by its neighbor, so every country should be able to understand Ukraine’s situation.”  

    In the Italian parliament, Meloni herself has dramatically dressed down legislators who have suggested supporting Ukraine is futile. That’s a world away from March 2020, when a COVID-stricken Italy asked its EU friends for help but received sluggish answers. Instead, the country had to turn to Russia and China, which made a big show of their rather limited assistance.  

    Greco helped the Queen’s Gambit become one of chess’s favorite opening moves, one that’s still used by grand masters today. It doesn’t always succeed, but it’s always worth trying because its rewards are considerable. There’s no guarantee that a Queen’s Gambit will work on the foreign policy stage either — but with so many crises and challenges pressing at the same time, trying to tackle them one by one is futile.

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    Elisabeth Braw

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  • ‘We simply are nowhere’: EU slams lack of progress at G20 climate meeting

    ‘We simply are nowhere’: EU slams lack of progress at G20 climate meeting

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    G20 climate ministers failed to make progress on key issues on Friday, drawing sharp criticism from the European Union. 

    Talks in the southern Indian city of Chennai took place against the backdrop of scientists finding that July is on track to become the world’s hottest month on record. 

    But the discussions wrapped up without consensus on the global transition away from fossil fuels; last week’s G20 energy ministerial ended on a similar note. 

    The EU, represented by Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius at the meeting, responded with exasperation. 

    “At the end of our meeting today, is the glass half full or half empty?” Sinkevičius asked in his closing remarks. “It is certainly empty when we look at where we stand on G20 commitments to address climate change — we simply are nowhere.” 

    Noting the devastation wrought by extreme weather across the globe in recent weeks, he decried the G20’s inability to find agreement on climate and energy issues as “disheartening.” 

    He added: “We cannot be driven by the lowest common denominator, or by narrow national interests. We cannot allow the pace of change to be set by the slowest movers in the room.” 

    France’s Ecological Transition Minister Christophe Bechu also told Agence France-Presse he was “disappointed” with the outcome, adding that discussions with China, Saudi Arabia and Russia in particular had been “complicated.”

    The split forced the Indian G20 presidency to publish an incomplete outcome document on issues countries managed to agree on, as well as an additional chair’s summary on others where ministers did not reach consensus. 

    “There are some issues about energy and target-oriented issues,” Indian Climate Minister Bhupender Yadav acknowledged in a press conference Friday. 

    There was no agreement on setting global goals for scaling up the deployment of renewables and energy efficiency — a key objective for the Emirati presidency of this year’s COP28 climate talks — or on phasing down planet-warming fossil fuels.

    Earlier on Friday, COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber expressed concern that the EU-backed target for tripling global renewable capacity had “yet to find expression in G20 outcomes.” 

    The chair’s summary included a short section on the energy transition that listed the issues that were discussed, concluding: “G20 members expressed views reiterating their positions” outlined at last weekend’s energy ministerial in Goa. 

    Discussions on efforts to reach a peak in global emissions by 2025 also ended without consensus, according to the document. 

    German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan echoed Sinkevičius’ disappointment, saying: “While fires rage around the world and temperatures break records, the G20 as a group has unfortunately been unable to act with the necessary sense of urgency and clarity.” 

    Progress, she added, “was blocked by a small group of countries.”  

    The EU and Germany both praised the G20’s “strong signal” on stepping up the fight against plastic pollution and deforestation, as well as countries’ agreement to look at deep-sea mining regulation.

    Still, on climate, the G20 “were asked to make bold choices, to demonstrate courage, commitment and leadership,” said Sinkevičius. “But we, collectively, failed to achieve that.” 

    All eyes are now on the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi in September. 

    “The disappointing G20 energy and climate outcomes show ministers don’t have the mandate to negotiate on the defining issues of our time,” said Luca Bergamaschi, co-founder of Italian climate think tank ECCO. “G20 leaders must step in and together agree the actions needed for a safer planet.”

    Louise Guillot contributed reporting.

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    Zia Weise

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  • US lawmakers press to remove oil boss from leading COP28 climate talks

    US lawmakers press to remove oil boss from leading COP28 climate talks

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    A group of U.S. lawmakers wants the Biden administration to ask the United Arab Emirates to remove the oil company chief the country chose to lead the next U.N. climate talks — or at a minimum “seek assurances” that the UAE will promote an ambitious COP28 summit.

    In a letter to Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, 27 members of the House and Senate called for him to “urge” the UAE to withdraw the appointment of UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to lead the COP28 discussions, which start November 30 in Dubai. The company is one of the world’s largest oil producers.

    “The appointment of an oil company executive to head COP 28 poses a risk to the negotiation process as well as the whole conference itself,” said the note, which was shared exclusively with POLITICO.

    “To help ensure that COP 28 is a serious and productive climate summit, we believe the United States should urge the United Arab Emirates to name a different lead for COP 28 or, at a minimum, seek assurances that it will promote an ambitious COP 28 aligned with the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit,” the lawmakers added.

    Kerry — along with other climate diplomats, including the EU’s Frans Timmermans — has repeatedly defended Al Jaber’s appointment in recent weeks, calling him a “terrific choice” in an interview with the Associated Press. Kerry also said ADNOC understood the need to shift its business away from fossil fuels. Kerry’s office was not immediately available to comment on the letter.

    A COP28 spokesperson, who had not seen the letter, defended Al Jaber’s record “as a diplomat, minister, and business leader across the energy and renewables industry.” They highlighted his role as founder of renewables company Masdar, calling it “one of the world’s largest renewable energy company with clean energy investments in over 40 countries.”

    “His experience uniquely positions him to be able to convene both the public and private sector to bring about pragmatic solutions to achieve the goals and aspirations of the Paris Climate Agreement,” the spokesperson said.

    But the U.S. lawmakers noted the long history of fossil fuel industry interference in climate talks.

    “Having a fossil fuel champion in charge of the world’s most important climate negotiations would be like having the CEO of a cigarette conglomerate in charge of global tobacco policy. It risks undermining the very essence of what is trying to be accomplished,” they wrote.

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    Karl Mathiesen

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