So, it is time for another one of those COP (Conference of Parties) meetings. This time it will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai from 30 November to 12 December. This is the 28th edition of the COP. And this one is important because it is supposed to carry out the first Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement (2015), which is a vital opportunity for the Parties to reflect on ambition, implementation, and cooperation, in line with the Paris temperature goal to hold the global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
For sometime now, the US and China have gotten together before the COP meetings and have invariably issued a Joint Statement which in turn has served as a template for the main meeting. After all, US and China are now the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, amounting to a whopping 43 per cent of global GHG emissions between themselves. US and China have already labelled the forthcoming COP 28 in Dubai as a “Methane and non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases Summit”. This is clever by the two biggest polluters. By focusing on Methane and non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases, inconvenient truths relating to coal, oil and gas use as well as climate finance may be brushed under the carpet.
China’s ability to ramp up coal use in recent months is the result of a huge national campaign over the past two years to expand coal mines and build more coal-fired power plants. State media celebrated the industriousness of the 1,000 workers who toiled without vacations in the spring of 2023 to finish one of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants in south-eastern China. Even the US gets 60 per cent of its energy from Coal and Natural Gas. And the idea repeated in successive COP meetings that all fossil fuels must abate is becoming more and more of a chimera. In the Glasgow COP meeting we saw the last minute drama over phase-down of coal as opposed to phase-out, as if that mattered one bit. China continues to burn more coal than the entire world put together and its GHG emissions exceed that of the entire developed world. So, Glasgow’s COP 26 (2021) promise to phase-down unabated coal power and inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels is rhetoric that will be honoured more in breach than in observance.
It is therefore interesting to see the two biggest polluters on the planet focus on Methane and non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases to avoid facing flak from others about their own green performance. Meanwhile. it has now been established that 2023 will indeed be the warmest year the world has ever seen. One does not need any Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change to tell us this. If you live in the developing world you can actually feel climate change every day of your life. And if you visited Europe in July this year, you will have wondered why you paid so much to travel to experience an “Indian Summer”!
The Global Stocktake language has already been agreed upon by the US and China in their “Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis” dated November 14 after detailed talks between US Climate Envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua from 4 to 7 November 2023.
India will have to watch out for the following at Dubai. If the Dubai COP 28 is going to be all about Methane, it is worth recalling that India did not sign on to the “Global Methane Pledge” (launched at the COP 26 in 2021) proposed by the US and the EU aimed at 30 per cent reduction of global methane emissions from 2020 levels by 2030. India is currently the fourth largest emitter of Methane, after China, US and Russia. China has released its long-awaited Methane Action Plan, but the plan only sets basic directions to control methane emissions across sectors, again falling short of setting meaningful reduction targets. India may come under pressure to do something similar.
India is a large emitter of methane, primarily because of the size of its rural economy and by virtue of having the largest cattle population. India has argued that it plans to deploy technology and capture methane that can be used as a source of energy. In a communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, India said approximately 20% of its anthropogenic methane emissions come from agriculture (manure management), coal mines, municipal solid waste, and natural gas and oil systems. To tap into this “potential,” the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has invested heavily in a national strategy to increase biogas production and reduce methane emissions. This biogas strategy includes many policy initiatives, capacity-building, and public-private partnerships. In addition to promoting biogas development, the strategy supports goals for sustainable development, sanitation improvements, and increased generation of renewable energy.
Meanwhile, climate justice continues to languish at COP meetings. Take climate finance for example. The US-China Joint Statement merely notes that the developed countries expect the pledge of $100 billion transfer to developing countries to happen in 2023, a promise made in 2009.
Expect a lot of rhetoric at this annual climate jamboree. The COP 28 may be expected to support the G20 Delhi Leaders Declaration to pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and to accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation.
But the politics of climate change will endure. Unfortunately, so will global warming.
Diplomacy and Geopolitics 