"Loss and Damage" — The Climate Plea

The people of the world were hopeful this year. COP26 was supposed to be the time when world leaders got their act together and became the heroes they were meant to be. Trump was out of office, and the US government was back in the climate change fight, after Trump’s backward move to leave the Paris Accord. Yet, according to tens of thousands of people, this conference was an utter failure.

The Maldivian government, led by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and the driven Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Technology Aminath Shauna, were very vocal about the need to take this struggle seriously. They also made quite a talking point regarding funds richer countries were to provide to the less-fortunate nations, for mitigation and development efforts, under the umbrella definition of 'Loss and Damage.' While speaking for the Maldives this demand is perhaps not the fairest, given how so many development initiatives and investments already exist that could be directed towards sustainability. However, for the rest of the countries suffering the brunt of violent climate change, this is an important factor. 

Before wandering too far from the point, it is important to understand the context of the 26th Conference of Parties in Glasgow.

In 1992, a landmark agreement known as the Kyoto Protocol was solidified as a means of guiding the collective response to the rapidly changing global climate. This agreement did not stand the test of time, with many influential nations pulling out or rejecting it outright. With a resurgence in discussions since 2009, another accord was soon born. This was the Paris Agreement, at COP21 in 2015, which pushed for certain parameters to be met. In broad terms, agreement was sought to limit the temperature increase to  1.5° C above pre-industrial levels by 2030.

For the uninitiated, here’s a breakdown. Industry, such as power plants, factories and the like, use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas to operate. Industry drives economic development, and an increase in such industrial facilities increases the quantity of fossil being burnt, increasing the amount of carbon-based gases such as carbon-dioxide and methane being pumped as waste into the atmosphere. These gases are called 'greenhouse’ gases, which trap the sun's heat within the atmosphere. This increases the mean global temperature, which in turn affects air and ocean currents and weather patterns. The overall effect is a change in current climate conditions, which permanently adjust weather patterns way faster than nature can catch up. When temperatures rise, life itself is in danger, and the world is at risk of becoming uninhabitable.

Poorer countries depend on their environment for sustainability, in food production as well as primary economic activities. When the climate changes and weather becomes unpredictable and harsher, livelihoods are affected, and destroyed, in places where people cannot afford man-made mitigation efforts. Developed nations have the means of adapting to the quickly changing climate, but low-lying countries like the Maldives, risk losing entire landmasses to rising sea-levels (a direct effect of rising global temperatures).

Now, with that understanding, consider the importance of agreements and deals like the Paris Agreement. The intention is to bring all nations together in solidarity, and pressure the more developed nations to reduce their hugely disproportionate pollution levels. They are also pressured into providing relief for the nations that do not contribute to the degradation of the environment but are on the frontlines in facing the negative effects resulting from such behaviour. In the Paris Agreement, contributing nations were supposed to agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically to ensure that the effects can be stopped before the odds become insurmountable.

However, six years later, the Paris Agreement is barely alive.

The nations with the highest contributions to the detriment of the climate, including China and the USA, have failed to meet nationally determined contributions (NDCs, individual to each nation based on their levels of pollution and industry). They have also failed to meet the financial support pledge of pooling USD100 billion per year as climate relief for less developed nations. In reality, the Paris Accord was quite pointedly ignored by the nations that had earlier been in favour of it, and the rest of the world has held their breath for nothing.

COP26 was intended to bring the agreement back on the table, and put more pressure on these countries to take responsibility for their contributions to climate change, changes that came to be because of their coal-powered industries. It was intended to hammer out the necessary deals and concessions, to enforce agreement to 1.5°C, yet the number-crunchers had delivered ominous results. They pointed out that to achieve this goal would require a reduction of over 27 gigaton of carbon gases being pumped into the air. Unsurprisingly, world leaders were not ready to concede their economic advantages to meet this requirement.

At the end of the two or so weeks of the conference, a paper known as the Glasgow Pact was published. This was not something that breathed life into the Paris Agreement; far from it, this was the furthest distance that world leaders could go from it. The new pact’s NDCs allowed for a 2.4°C increase in mean global temperatures by 2030, and a USD300 billion per year pact from developed countries to provide mitigation financing for developing nations. What is most noticeable was how all the NDCs, when calculated, would only contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 4 gigaton, not the required 27. However, this agreement alone requires a lengthy breakdown to fully understand the impact it could have in the future.

This article is the first in a series that seeks to breakdown the global discussions on climate change mitigation and international mobilisation on the issue. The Maldivian people need to stay aware on the global situation, which would also help formulate the key decisions in voting for national leaders. Stay tuned for follow-up pieces, and learn more about the paths being paved for the future.