Meeting in Bangkok, negotiators failed to produce a working basis ahead of December's Cop 24 climate conference. The Paris Agreement is at risk.
The final week of negotiations before the next United Nations world climate conference, scheduled for December in Katowice, closed in a mood of anger and frustration. Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, representatives of the nearly 200 nations that will take part in Cop 24 failed to produce a final document that could serve as the basis for negotiations to be held in Poland. "We have made too little progress on some issues," admitted the executive secretary of the Unfccc (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), Patricia Espinosa.
"Developed countries are responsible for the overwhelming majority of historical CO2 emissions and many of them have grown considerably wealthy by burning fossil fuels," recalled Amjad Abdulla, who represents around forty small nations, from the Maldives to the Bahamas. Even so, part of the wealthy world is in effect refusing to do its share. And the sticking point, once again, is financing. The Paris Agreement, taking up what was decided back in 2009 in Copenhagen — now a very distant memory — provides for an annual allocation of 100 billion dollars to help the most vulnerable nations in the face of climate change. "They are already imposing devastating consequences on us. Some nations even risk disappearing due to rising sea levels," caused by the melting of ice, Abdulla added.
The smaller nations, at the end of the week of talks in Thailand, pointed the finger bluntly at "the United States and their allies". They were accused of pursuing a policy of disengagement on the climate issue. In technical terms, this translates into the impossibility of reaching an agreement on the "structure" of future financing: how, when and to whom — in concrete terms — funds should be granted. The AFP news agency cited in particular a "high-level source within the African bloc", according to whom the situation is at a breaking point. With wealthy countries "going back on their promises and refusing to discuss future allocations". The same person concluded despondently: "It's as if we have to start all over again from scratch…".
A view shared by Harjeet Singh of the NGO ActionAid, who said that "the Paris Agreement is on the brink." Organisations, too, are pointing the finger at Donald Trump's United States, alongside whom stand in particular part of the European Union — the United Kingdom foremost among them — and Australia.
Choosing Bangkok as the venue for the week of preparatory work ahead of Cop 24 made no difference. According to the director of the local Greenpeace division, Tara Buakamsri, 40 per cent of the Thai megacity, home to more than ten million inhabitants, risks finding itself submerged by the sea by 2030. A warning that, at least for now, does not appear to have been heeded.
