The UN-led climate talks will be hosted for the first time by the UK (in Glasgow) in 2021. They represent the first opportunity since the signing of the 2015 UNFCCC Paris Agreement for countries to ratchet up the commitments in their NDCs. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the ‘emissions gap’ – between where emissions are heading on current trajectories, and where they need to be to reach the ‘Paris goal’ defined at COP21, in 2015, of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – is vast, and growing. As matters stand, the world is due to heat up by 2.7–3.1°C by the end of the 21st century. Countries need to increase – by five times – their existing commitments to reduce the production of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Currently, one of the COP26 co-hosts, the UK, has committed to reducing its economy-wide GHG emissions by at least 68 per cent, compared to 1990 levels, by 2030; the EU – which includes Italy, the second co-host – has pledged ‘at least 55 per cent’ net reduction below 1990 levels. Following the US’s re-entry into the Paris Agreement under President Biden, the country is expected to commit to reducing its emissions by 45–50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Yet the pledging of such climate mitigation commitments, particularly where they impact on areas like land use, cannot be considered to the exclusion of the broader systemic implications or trade-offs.
Fortunately, UNFCCC COP26 is one in an aligned series of events that could create synergies, rather than problematic knock-on effects. In particular, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15 summit will mark the end of the 10-year period covered by the Aichi biodiversity targets set in 2010, and should herald the start of a new, post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Both the UNFCCC COP26 and CBD COP15 conferences had initially been planned to take place in 2020, it being hoped by many in government and international institutions that the two summits would intersect to create a ‘super year for the environment’, with international cooperation unlocking greater global ambition vis-à-vis the overarching SDGs. However, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic were grave and myriad, including the postponement of these COPs and the cancellation of other international environmental negotiations and government meetings.
The pandemic has also had impacts on domestic policymaking across the world, including delays to critical elements of the sequencing around environmental negotiations, such as the submission of NDCs. Profound negative impacts on supply and demand in the global economy have led to calls for environmental regulation to be reduced or abandoned. The federal bailout of industries affected by the pandemic in the US, for example, has included concessions to oil, gas and coal companies to the tune of nearly $100 billion. Rising geopolitical tensions related to the fallout of COVID-19 saw a negative effect on the prospects for international cooperation – including the further deterioration of the US–China relationship, once a linchpin of climate cooperation – and attacks on international institutions and scientific advice.
Yet the global recovery effort, whether represented through stimulus packages, bailouts, strategic funding or targeted policy reforms, presents a critical moment to renew calls for dynamic coordination, international cooperation and holistic thinking around how healthy, low-carbon development models and innovation can be prioritized. It is more important than ever to identify positive examples at domestic, regional and international levels that might strengthen such an approach. In Europe, the EGD – an ambitious, integrated set of green industrial, digital and circular economy frameworks – has become central to post-COVID-19 plans, and has been described by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as ‘our motor for the recovery’.
While much of the focus of coverage and policymaking around the EGD has been internal, its official communication promises to ‘develop a stronger “green deal diplomacy” focused on convincing and supporting others to take on their share of promoting more sustainable development’. This commitment enhances the EGD’s particular importance as one of the potential pillars of re-engaged international coordination with respect to the recovery – particularly with the US and China, the world’s two largest GHG emitters. The EU–US–China geopolitical triangle will continue to be complex and fraught, particularly at leadership level, but joint coordination around solutions could reinvigorate the arc of engagement.
