COP30: World headed to fail to keep global warming below 1.5c?

Jehangir Hussain :

The eleven-day COP30 ended at Belem, Brazil on November 21, leaving the objective of controlling emissions of fossil fuels particularly CO2 once again unrealized.

The compromise agreement failed to reach consensus on a binding roadmap for zero deforestation by 2030. As in the past 29 summits, COP30 remained shrouded in the same fog of failure.

The responsibility for this failure does not lie solely with the host country, Brazil, but with industrially advanced nations and the United Nations, which is tasked with safeguarding the world’s forests and climate.

Tension between the USA and Europe over the Russia-Ukraine war also left a negative impact on the conference. USA, China, Russia and India, considered major emitters, did not attend the conference.

Instead of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the agreement took regional or national studies as the ‘best available science’ raising alarm among scientists.

Norway, Germany, France and Indonesia made an initial pledge to provide $5.5 billion for Tropical Forests Forever to compensate forest rich countries to preserve their forests.

The year 2024 was the hottest globally. Bangladesh was the worst hit country in Asia and the Pacific, with almost 33 million people affected by lower crop output, extensive school closures, many heatstroke and related diseases.

In Bandung, Indonesia, shows a study, temperature differences varied by up to 7.C between the hottest and the coolest parts of the city. With about 700 heat-related deaths in informal settlements, India was also badly affected.

Glacial melt due to rising temperatures affected other parts of the Earth’s ecosystem. Glaciers lost about 5 percent of their volume in the last 25 years.
Scientists predict that by 2060, Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, Mongolia and Myanmar would lose over 70 percent of their glacier mass.

Emissions cause sea-level rise increasing existential risk for a number of countries in the Pacific. 2025 is the International Year of Glacial Preservation, offering an opportunity for collective action.

To tackle challenges facing the region, member countries met at the Bangkok based U N Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to consider steps to integrate heat risks into early warning systems and development planning.

Turning to COP30 shows that the conference brought together political leaders, scientists, civil society and the NGOs to tackle climate danger.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that countries need to move towards concrete plans to reduce their emissions over the next decade and simultaneously deliver climate justice to the people on the frontlines of the crisis they did little to cause.

To him, the clean technology revolution means it is possible to cut emissions while growing economies.

Since the developing countries lack the resources, finance and technologies needed to support the transition, the UN Secretary General further said, this has become difficult to achieve.

The tipping point is much closer, warned Carlos Nobre, a distinguished scientist of Brazil.

A global authority on the interactions between tropical rainforests and the climate, Nobre was a lead author of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that won the Nobel Prize in 2007 for its report on global warming.

“If deforestation and global warming continue, the Amazon will reach the point of no return by 2050 at the latest,” says Nobre.

By 2100, warms Nobre, 50-70 percent of the ecosystem could degrade, in this scenario, releasing a “gigantic amount of CO?” over 250 billion tonnes in the atmosphere, making it “impossible” to keep global temperature within 1.5 degrees, a goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement – the cornerstone of global efforts to combat planetary heating.

Nobre warns, degradation of biodiversity poses a huge risk of epidemics and pandemics for the world.

Nobre is perplexed by denial of the environmental crisis by America under President Donal J Trump, who called climate change “the greatest con job ever.”
The Amazon bime is called the lungs of the Earth, because of its massive absorption of carbon dioxide providing a buffere against climate change.

“How is it possible for the country to elect a climate denier as its president, the country which invested the most in climate science , the country with the largest number of climate scientists, the country which contributed the most to the IPCC report,” asks Nobre.

There is no justification for new oil or coal mining anywhere in the world, maintains Nobre, to prevent the world from ecocide.

So far not delivering, political leaders are facing a huge test whether or not they can tackle rising temperatures facing the world. The goal of slashing heat to 1.5 C would remain elusive if they don’t deliver. A handful of countries are on track to meet their targets, set by the Paris Agreement which also created the framework of global cooperation.

At the last minute, talks continued late into the night, with the Arab Group—22 oil-rich nations—declaring that any discussion targeting their energy sector was “unacceptable.” Saudi Arabia warned that targeting their industry would lead to “collapse of negotiations.”

According to reports, emissions from oil, gas and coal are set to increase total carbon dioxide emissions to 38.1 billion tonnes in the outgoing year, 1.1 per cent higher than in 2024, despite the largest ever expansion of renewable energy.

Wealthy countries have also failed to fully provide $100 billion per year, which they had pledged long back, in climate finance to help poorer countries mitigate the impacts of climate change. Global fossil fuel emissions hit a record high in the outgoing year keeping global warming below 1.5 C above the pre-industrial level.

(The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached [email protected])