"The Glasgow Climate Pact recognises that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to 2010 levels and reaching net zero around mid-century."

Last year, Alok Sharma, president of Cop26 in Glasgow, left us with those words. For some, however, that goal has already slipped away. Why? Because in recent days the news has been circulating that the objective of keeping the temperature increase within 1.5 degrees is now impossible to achieve. The Economist wrote it first — devoting a cover to it. The BBC then inferred it from an analysis by Carbon Brief of the texts that will make up the final agreement: it appears that this year's drafts lack an explicit declaration on the need to keep this target alive, in contrast to what was written in the Glasgow Pact in 2021. It is worth noting that all the outlets expressing concern are British ones which, it is reasonable to suppose, do not want to see what was achieved under the UK's presidency at Cop26 undermined.

Let me take a step back, however, by turning to the data and the facts. The Paris Agreement contains the phrase "well below two degrees"; it then became customary to set 1.5 degrees as the primary target, to keep ambition high and to give greater weight to the scientists who have shown us what would change with just half a degree more: for example, the number of people without access to water would double, while the share of the population at risk from extreme heat would rise from 14 per cent of the total to 37 per cent. And there is the possibility of ice-free Arctic summers occurring once every ten years rather than once every hundred.

Well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius

Accordo di Parigi

What lends weight to the Economist's argument — that the 1.5-degree target is now impossible to achieve — is the fact that the increase already stands at around 1.2 degrees today, and given that in recent years we have increased emissions rather than reduced them, it is easy to imagine that in the near future we will be unable to do what was required plus everything we have so far failed to do. In short, we are at a point in the story where everything is going wrong.

It's not over until it's over

Chiara Di Mambro, head of decarbonisation at Ecco, an Italian climate think tank, whom I met here at Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, explained to me that "what is being discussed here is changing the paradigm of our economic model. It is a complicated matter that should not be trivialised. And in those rooms, the rooms where the negotiations take place, you can feel it first-hand."

It is also important to understand what drives the agenda of a Cop, depending on the host country. If it is held in an industrialised country — and therefore one responsible for emissions — it is natural that mitigation features heavily, that is, how and by how much to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases. But when the Cop takes place in a developing country, the agenda is immediately centred on adaptation — on how to adjust to a climate that has already changed. This is because Egypt and other African countries bear an infinitesimally small share of responsibility for the current concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, while being among the most vulnerable to the consequences of the climate crisis. This is why here, at Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, it is harder to base the discussion on raising reduction pledges, while it is easier to focus on the topic of loss and damage — that is, the losses and damages suffered by countries most exposed to extreme climate events and the funds needed to address them.

According to Di Mambro, then, it is not possible to rule out that the one-and-a-half-degree target will be met, even if on-the-ground action has slowed relative to what might have been expected. "However, the needs and expectations of all the countries participating in this process must always be put in perspective," Di Mambro concludes, "including developing countries that have not contributed to global warming in the same way. For these countries, action on climate change means integrating decarbonisation into their development model. They therefore need financing, and mechanisms that safeguard and protect them and enable development even in the wake of extreme climate events of which they are, in any case, the first victims."