Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 1: The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson kicked off the global climate summit in Glasgow in Scotland likening the present world conditions with the fictional James Bond strapped to a ticking bomb and said the world was “strapped to a doomsday device.”
Johnson’s reference was to the ever-warming Earth’s position comparing it with that of fictional secret agent James Bond 007 strapped to a bomb that would destroy the planet and trying to work out how to defuse it.
He told leaders that “we are in roughly the same position” only that the present “ticking doomsday device” was real and not fiction. The threat was climate change triggered by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and he pointed out that ironically it all started in Glasgow with James Watt’s steam engine powered by coal.
Johnson was inaugurating the world leaders’ summit portion of a United Nations’ Climate Conference COP26 which is aimed at getting agreement to curb carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) below pre-industrial levels. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). Current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C (4.9F) by the year 2100.
After Johnson, scores of other leaders will traipse to the podium at crucial international climate talks and talk about what their country is going to do about the threat of global warming. From U.S. President Joe Biden to Seychelles President Wavel John Charles Ramkalawan, they are expected to say how their nation will do its utmost, challenge colleagues to do more and generally turn up the rhetoric.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also schedule to present the formal position on India’s climate action agenda and lay out the best practices and achievements in the sector. During the high-profile segment of the World Leaders’ Summit, the Prime Minister is scheduled to deliver a national statement alongside other world leaders and India’s statement will come after that of Prime Minister of Poland Matuesz Morawiecki, with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan set to follow.
“Landed in Glasgow. Will be joining the COP26 Summit, where I look forward to working with other world leaders on mitigating climate change and articulating India’s efforts in this regard,” Modi said on Twitter soon after he landed Glasgow from the G20 Summit in Rome on Sunday night. Modi was received to the notes of Scottish bagpipes as he arrived at his hotel in Glasgow, where he was greeted by a large group of Indian diaspora representatives with chants of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” He is also scheduled to hold a meet and greet with around 45 Indian diaspora representatives from Glasgow and Edinburgh, including prominent medics, academics and business people.
He will also meet the Indian winner of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, Delhi-based recycling firm Takachar founder Vidyut Mohan, and 14-year-old prize finalist from Tamil Nadu Vinisha Umashankar, inventor of a solar-powered ironing cart. He will then proceed for the opening ceremony of day one of the World Leaders’ Summit of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), being held at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow.
Modi’s bilateral meeting with his British counterpart Boris Johnson is expected to take place soon after the opening ceremony. Johnson has said the summit would be the “world’s moment of truth” and has urged world leaders to make the most of it.
“The question everyone is asking is whether we seize this moment or let it slip away,” he said, ahead of the two-week conference. According to official sources, the Johnson-Modi talks are expected to be quite brief and will focus on the UK-India climate partnership as well as a stock-take of the 2030 Roadmap for stronger UK-India Strategic Partnership – signed by the two leaders during a virtual summit in May this year. He is also expected to reiterate his invitation for Johnson to visit India.
“Both governments remain committed to the implementation of the Roadmap, within prescribed timelines. Accordingly, we are looking to launch negotiations in November 2021 for an Interim Agreement to be signed in March 2022 and eventually a comprehensive agreement, if all goes according to schedule, by November 2022,” India’s High Commissioner to the UK, Gaitri Issar Kumar, said ahead of the prime ministerial talks. It would be the first in-person meeting between Modi and Johnson following the latter’s twice cancelled visit to India earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bilateral meeting will be followed by a leader-level COP26 event entitled Action and Solidarity: The Critical Decade, for which the UK has extended a special invitation for Modi to deliver an address on the subject of “adaptation.” “India is among the top countries in the world in terms of installed renewable energy, wind and solar energy capacity. At the WLS, I will share India’s excellent track record on climate action and our achievements,” Modi said in a statement ahead of the summit.
“I will also highlight the need to comprehensively address climate change issues including equitable distribution of carbon space, support for mitigation and adaptation and resilience building measures, mobilisation of finance, technology transfer and importance of sustainable lifestyles for green and inclusive growth,” he said. At the end of day one of the World Leaders’ Summit, Modi will join more than 120 Heads of Government and Heads of State at a special VVIP reception at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum – one of Scotland’s most popular visitor attractions.
The reception will also involve members of the royal family, including Prince Charles and wife Camilla and Prince William and wife Kate Middleton. Queen Elizabeth II was due to attend this special reception but pulled out last week after a medical advice against travel.
Johnson told the summit that humanity had run down the clock when it comes to climate change, and the time for action was now. He pointed out that more than 130 world leaders who gathered had an average age of over 60, while the generations most harmed by climate change aren’t yet born. Britain’s leader struck a gloomy note on the eve of the conference, after Group of 20 leaders made only modest climate commitments at their summit in Rome.
“After the world leaders leave doing the big political give-and-take, setting out broad outlines of agreement, the government officials will hammer out the nagging but crucial details. That’s what worked to make the historic 2015 Paris Climate deal a success,” former U.N. Climate Secretary Christiana Figueres said. “For heads of state, it is actually a much better use of their strategic thinking,” Figueres said.
In Paris, the two signature goals — trying to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times and net zero carbon emissions by 2050 — were created by this leaders-first process, Figueres said. In the unsuccessful 2009 Copenhagen meeting the leaders swooped in at the end.
Thousands lined up in a chilly wind in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday to get through a bottleneck at the entrance to the venue. But what will be noticeable are a handful of major absences at the summit known as COP26. Xi Jinping, president of top carbon-polluting nation China, won’t be in Glasgow. Figueres said his absence isn’t that big a deal because he isn’t leaving the country during the pandemic and his climate envoy is a veteran negotiator.
US president Joe Biden, however, has chided China and Russia for their less than ambitious efforts to curb emissions and blamed them for a disappointing statement on climate change from the Group of 20 summit of the world’s largest economies in Rome this weekend.
Perhaps more troublesome for the U.N. summit is the absence of several small nations from the Pacific islands that couldn’t make it because of COVID-19 restrictions and logistics. That’s a big problem because their voices relay urgency, Figueres said.
In addition, the heads of several major emerging economies beyond China are also skipping the summit, including those from Russia, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa. That leaves India’s Modi the only leader present from the so-called BRICS nations, which account for more than 40% of global emissions.
Kevin Conrad, a negotiator from Papua New Guinea who also chairs the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, said he’s watching the big carbon-polluting nations. “I think it’s really important for the United States and China to show leadership as the two largest emitters. If both of them can show it can be done, I think they give hope to the rest of the world,” he said.
Scientists say the chances of meeting the goal to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius this century are slowly slipping away. The world has already warmed by more than 1.1C and current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C by the year 2100.
The amount of energy unleashed by such warming would melt much of the planet’s ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, experts say. But before the U.N. climate summit, the G-20 leaders, at the close of their meeting, offered vague climate pledges instead of commitments of firm action, saying they would seek carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century.” The countries also agreed to end public financing for coal-fired power generation abroad, but set no target for phasing out coal domestically — a clear nod to China and India.
The G-20 countries represent more than three-quarters of the world’s climate-damaging emissions and summit host Italy, and Britain, which is hosting the Glasgow conference, had been hoping for more ambitious targets coming out of Rome. India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, has yet to follow China, the U.S. and the European Union in setting a target for reaching “net zero” emissions. Negotiators are hoping Modi will announce such a goal in Glasgow.
The Biden administration has tried hard to temper expectations that two weeks of climate talks will produce major breakthroughs on cutting climate-damaging emissions.
Rather than a quick fix, “Glasgow is the beginning of this decade race, if you will,” Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, said.