India threw a last-minute spanner in the works by insisting on changing a promise to 'phase out' unabated coal power to 'phase down' instead
finally came to an end, with 197 parties agreeing to the newly-dubbed “Glasgow Climate Pact”. There were several notable achievements. Countries committed themselves to further accelerating their decarbonisation plans and, specifically, to strengthening their emissions-reduction targets for 2030 by next year, rather than in 2025 as per the five-year schedule set out under the Paris agreement. Developed countries were “urged” to double funding for adaptation in developing countries by 2025.
The closing moments, though, were hardly jubilant. Speaking from the floor of the final plenary India demanded that a particularly contentious clause be changed. Instead of a commitment toward “accelerating efforts towards the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels”, the country’s lead negotiator requested a call to escalate “efforts to phase down unabated coal power, and phase out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies”.
This explicit acknowledgement of coal and fossil fuels as the main drivers of climate change had been celebrated as a major breakthrough. The European Union, Switzerland and many developing nations—which had previously strongly objected to the wording being watered down once through the qualifiers “unabated” and “inefficient”—expressed outrage. But they ultimately decided that they could not let it derail the agreement.
The feeling of compromises accepted in order to preserve some progress permeated the final hours of the summit. Many countries were vocal about the gravity of the concessions they were making in pursuit of consensus. Almost every developing country expressed deep disappointment that no concrete agreement had been reached on compensation to vulnerable countries for the damage they are already experiencing due to climate change.
In his final statement António Guterres, the UN’s secretary-general, noted that the decision flowed from “the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today”. Difficulty in assessing the fruits of the last fortnight in Glasgow reflect, in large part, the difficulty of harnessing a process as sclerotic as international diplomacy to a problem as urgent as climate change.
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