The delegations of the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait reject the Ipcc report on climate change. Fierce clash at Cop 24 in Katowice.
The fight against climate change is not a heritage shared by all of humanity. This was confirmed by the first week of negotiations at Cop 24 in Katowice, the United Nations world climate conference. The international community has in fact been divided over a key element of the negotiations: the Ipcc Special Report 15, which explained what consequences the planet should expect in the event of an increase in average global temperature of 1.5 degrees by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial levels.
The document – which was commissioned by the governments themselves at Cop 21 in Paris in 2015 – does not merely provide a "snapshot" of the world that awaits us in the future. It also explains that the current trajectory will take us well beyond the limit we have set ourselves: the average temperature will in fact rise by more than 3 degrees, which will entail a climate catastrophe.
Not only that: the +1.5 degrees expected for 2100 could arrive far sooner — as early as 2030, in the absence of immediate and radical action by governments around the world. And it is precisely these considerations that have divided the representatives of states in Poland. In particular, the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait refused to include in the draft final conclusions any wording that could suggest support for the Ipcc report.
Thus, rather than indicating that governments "welcome" the study, it was preferred to state that they "take note" of it. According to reports by the ANSA news agency, there was a lengthy stand-off over the issue, and since no agreement could be reached, "the passage of the text was set aside". "The problem is not this word or that word," commented Ruenna Haynes, delegate of the Central American island state of Saint Kitts and Nevis. "The problem is accepting a document that we ourselves commissioned." "We are very angry and we find it atrocious that some countries are ignoring the messages we are receiving and the consequences we are heading towards, not accepting what is evident and not acting in the necessary way," added Yamide Dagnet of the World Resources Institute, as reported by the British broadcaster BBC.
The hope is that in the second week of Cop 24 negotiations — the week in which "political" delegates, and not only "technical" ones, will take centre stage — the international community may yet show a surge of resolve. But the front led by Vladimir Putin's Russia and Donald Trump's United States appears, for now, united.
