The curtain fell on the twenty-second United Nations conference on climate change (Cop 22) in the night between Friday 18 and Saturday 19 November. Negotiators from the 193 countries present — 111 of which have already ratified the Paris Agreement — concluded two weeks of work with a moderately positive balance sheet. No exceptional advances were recorded, but neither were there any deadlocks.

Among the decisions approved at the close of Cop 22 in Marrakech, Morocco, was an important step forward: the obligation on the part of participating countries to take stock of their CO2 emissions by next year. This is with the aim of revising the Indcs (Intended nationally determined contributions) — that is, the pledges to reduce CO2 emitted into the atmosphere — by 2018. No longer by 2020, as envisaged during Cop 21 in Paris.

New emissions reduction pledges ahead of the Ipcc report

"In this sense — explains Mariagrazia Midulla, head of climate and energy at Wwf Italia, to LifeGate — Marrakech sent a strong call to action. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ipcc) will release a new report setting out what needs to be done to limit the increase in average global temperature by the end of the century to a maximum of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels." Consequently, government commitments will have to be adjusted, not least because the current Indcs are nowhere near sufficient to achieve that goal. At present, they would lead to a rise of around 3 degrees — which, for the Earth, would mean heading towards catastrophe.

Little progress on the question of financing

Disappointing, by contrast, are the results on agriculture. This is a sector that has enormous consequences for global warming and will itself suffer as a result of climate change. And the survival of millions of people around the world depends on agricultural yields. On the issue, however, progress remains scant: what is missing is an agreement between the global north and south, particularly on the support that the most vulnerable countries need to adapt to climate change. "There needs to be a rebalancing between the resources earmarked for climate change mitigation and those deployed for adaptation policies — Mauro Albrizio, head of climate and the European office of Legambiente, explained to LifeGate — and today just 20 per cent of the funds allocated goes to the latter. If we do not resolve this problem, we risk dividing the international community."

The question of financing was indeed one of the pillars of the Cop 22 negotiations. The two weeks of work in Marrakech yielded rather thin results. Setting aside the 81 million dollars in new contributions to the Adaptation Fund pledged by Germany, Italy, Sweden and Belgium, the negotiations as a whole remained largely stalled. "Most developed countries arrived at Cop 22 empty-handed, with no concrete announcements to make, not even on financing," underlined Lucile Dufour, head of international policy at Réseau Action Climat.

Trump's shadow unites the rest of the world

"We need to see how the new American administration will behave — it could decide to cut the funds earmarked so far by Obama," added Albrizio. The shadow of United States president-elect Donald Trump seemed to lengthen over the final hours of the conference. A shadow that, however, had the effect of uniting the rest of the world in a common front against the gravest threat of the twenty-first century. So much so that 48 of the countries most vulnerable to extreme weather events (Climate Vulnerable Forum) declared their intention to meet 100 per cent of their energy needs from renewable sources by 2020 and to update their Indcs accordingly.

Cop 22 president Salaheddine Mezouar addressed the new American head of state directly: "We are counting on his pragmatism and his commitment," because "the international community is engaged in a great battle for the future of the planet and for the dignity of millions of people."

Even more explicit was Frank Bainimarama, prime minister of Fiji, during the final plenary session that brought the work of Cop 22 to a close: "We invite Trump to come to Fiji to see with his own eyes whether climate change doesn't exist." Fiji will lead the work of Cop 23, which will be held in Bonn, Germany. It is the first time for an island state. "All of us — declared Bainimarama — turned to the United States in the dark days of the Second World War. We were saved then. Today Washington must play its part to save us, again."