U.N. Ambition Summit gives a preview of of new climate politics
By: Tina Latif
Tags: Clean Energy, Boris Johnson, Climate Change, Joe Biden, Climate Action

Boris Johnson urges UK to become the ‘Saudi Arabia of wind power’ (UN Images)

This weekend marked the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. To commemorate, the U.N., U.K., Italy, Chile and France hosted a Climate Ambition Summit, to test how far political leaders are willing to go in pursuit of the Paris goals.

The Summit was hastily convened in September, after a surprise announcement by Chinese President Xi Jingping, committing the world’s biggest polluter to carbon neutrality before 2060. In that speech, Xi revived a failing political process that has barely survived the rise of nationalist populism.

The Summit fell flat on delivering anything even remotely close to the ambition we need to meet the Paris goals. But it did give a preview of what the next four years of climate politics will look like. The upcoming COP26 conference, the U.S. election of Joe Biden and China’s bold commitments will turbo-charge global cooperation and economic transformation and catapult climate change back up the top of the global agenda.

Here are five key climate outlooks from this weekend’s event:

1. Net-zero is the new normal

A key part of the Paris framework depends on “peer pressure” among countries to raise their climate ambition every five years, through revised pledges called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The next round of NDCs are due at COP26, which will be hosted by the U.K. in November 2021.

Even against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU, China, Japan and South Korea — which together represent 48% of the world’s emissions — have committed to net-zero targets by around 2050. The election of Joe Biden will turn this momentum into a landslide of higher ambition, and countries will be expected to step up in 2021.

On Saturday, U.N. secretary- general António Guterres called on all countries to declare a “climate emergency”, saying the world needs to cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030, relative to 2010 levels. More than that — Guterres warned that leaders “must pass a credibility test”, by committing to short-term goals, not just mid-century targets that are safely beyond their political lifetimes. In doing so, he offered a glimpse of the standard leaders are expected to meet, ahead of COP26.

2. Jobs are in; Tree-hugging is out

In possibly the most colourful speech of the evening, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that the U.K. is pursuing ambitious climate targets not because they are “tree-hugging, mung bean-munching eco freaks”, but rather because climate investments will create millions of high-skilled jobs as countries recover from the global pandemic. Other leaders reiterated this too (albeit in less interesting language). And Biden himself has made a concerted effort to sell his climate plan as one that is more about jobs, health and infrastructure, than about an altruistic vision to save the planet. Moreover, Biden has committed himself to a just transition for fossil fuel dependent communities, which leaves no one behind.

But it is one thing for leaders to make these statements, and another for the U.N.’s governance structures to acknowledge them. Currently, NDCs focus on two broad things: the amount of emissions each country expects to reduce (mitigation), how they will deal with the physical impacts of climate change (adaptation). To date, no country has used its NDC to attract investment or communicate the economic or social benefits of climate action.

As governments prepare to roll out trillions of dollars towards coronavirus recovery, they should be encouraged to lay out the number of jobs their NDCs will create, overall impact on national GDP, and the concrete reforms — with timelines — that will be undertaken to incentivize investment in low-carbon projects and technologies.

Governments now have a unique opportunity to shift the narrative on climate action to one that is pro-business, pro-jobs and pro-planet. By communicating the economic benefits of climate action, the Paris Climate Agreement can become about saving the economy and creating jobs, as much as it is about saving the planet.

3. You can’t sit with us: Countries turned away for not showing ambition

While everyone was invited, a handful of countries who submitted requests to speak were declined. This was a big step for the U.N. (which typically runs on a full-consensus model) and was designed to put pressure on climate laggards.

It seems to be working — ahead of the Summit, Australia’s Scott Morrison ditched a contentious plan to use an accounting loophole to meet its Paris goals, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro made a last-minute climate pledge, setting an “indicative” goal of net-zero emissions by 2060. 2021 will see this pressure intensify, especially as the new Biden administration uses the full force of American foreign policy to push for “every policy to be a climate policy”.

4. Developed countries will miss their $100 billion a year finance pledge, but will need to make up for it soon

2020 was the year where developed countries were supposed to hit a $100 billion a year climate finance pledge, but they are unlikely to make it. The latest OECD numbers for 2018 show $78.9 billion in finance, but that is likely to be less this year thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even so, Guiseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, and German chancellor Angela Merkel both announced new contributions to climate adaptation programs. But while there may be some leeway given to developed countries in light of the pandemic’s economic impact, failure to make good on this promise could undermine confidence in the entire climate process, and lead developing countries to revolt.

5. Biden made his voice heard and added to an already busy climate calendar

While the U.S. was not represented at the meeting, president-elect Joe Biden issued a statement promising to host a major event on climate in his first 100 days in office, adding to an already packed and high-level 2021 climate calendar.

If the test for Saturday’s Climate Ambition Summit was whether leaders would raise the bar through their own commitments, it failed. But no serious observer expected the hastily organized event to do so. What it did show, is the kind of overwhelming pressure political and corporate leaders will face, as climate change catapults back up the global agenda in 2021.