COPs are not just about carbon emissions reductions

Photo credit: UNFCC

We need to tread cautiously when criticising the COP process for failing to deliver emissions reductions.

This is not their only purpose.

Part of the process is for each country to set targets and create international accountability around those targets. These are known as Nationally Determined Contributions (see below).

But rapidly reducing emissions on a global scale is complex.

While many activists are calling for a complete and immediate end to fossil fuels, global leaders need to consider climate action in the balance of food security, defence and economic concerns. It would be no good achieving net zero overnight if it left millions of people in poverty or triggered a famine.

Scientists agree that we can’t end the use of fossil fuels immediately.

The global economy, human health and livelihoods currently depend heavily on oil, coal and gas.

The world’s governments need to find a way to displace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewable energy sources, at speed to meet the emergency nature of the climate crisis, without creating another emergency elsewhere.

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And it’s important to do that in a fair and equitable way. 

A global problem requires a global solution. 

COPs are the only time that all major global powers come together with a singular focus – on the climate emergency – to find a way forward on key issues including carbon and methane emissions, deforestation and ocean conservation – agreeing to policy and financial commitments and addressing the wider impact on global inequalities, health, climate mitigation and justice.

By dismissing the COP process as a failure on emissions alone, we exclude voices from the Global South, dismiss the importance of climate justice and risk losing the key mechanism for cooperation and accountability that ensures an end to fossil fuels is found without costing more lives by triggering another global crisis.

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