AFP UK

Focus at the COP26 summit turned Wednesday to how the world will pay for its ambitions to quit fossil fuels and help vulnerable nations survive climate change, as campaigners expressed scepticism over promises of billions from financiers and governments.    

After a world leaders’ summit yielded a landmark deal slashing methane emissions, negotiators are now tasked with keeping alive the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But a simmering diplomatic spat between the United States, China and Russia over their climate action ambitions showed the fragile nature of talks aimed at averting disastrous global heating.

With funding crucial for turning climate pledges into reality, a financial coalition representing trillions in private capital made net-zero pledges on Wednesday. 

COP26 president Alok Sharma said there was “big momentum” from the private sector. 

But he acknowledged that governments of wealthy nations failed to honour a key pledge to help poorer nations green their energy grids and respond to increasingly extreme drought and flooding.   

He told the conference it was “regrettable” that the decade-old vow to provide $100 billion annually had not been delivered by 2020 as promised and would likely not be met until 2023. 

Delays in the funding have reopened tensions between vulnerable nations, often the least responsible for emissions, and polluting richer countries.     

“Climate finance in 2021 is as volatile as the strengthening storms that rip through the fabric of our economy year in year out,” Fiji’s Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum told the conference, adding it was still unclear in what form the money would come in.  

“How many years until we wake up and realise that we have built a system that actually destroys the planet by design,” he said, slamming continuing subsidies for fossil fuels. 

– Net zero? –

But former Bank of England governor Mark Carney told the conference the global financial system “has been transformed to deliver net zero”. 

With billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, he is spearheading an initiative by a group of 450 banks, insurers and pension funds with $130 trillion in assets to help countries achieve carbon neutrality.  

Carney said the Glasgow Financial Alliance would help the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “at the latest”.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the conference mobilising private capital was “essential”. 

“No amount of public financing alone will be sufficient to meet the demands of the climate crisis,” she warned.

But campaign groups reacted with scepticism, pointing out that funds involved were still investing heavily in oil and gas.

“The commitments they have made are so full of loopholes, that there is plenty of space for some of the worst financiers of the worst polluters on the planet,” said Kenneth Haar of the Corporate Europe Observatory.

– ‘Long way to go’ –

And on the streets of Glasgow, Extinction Rebellion and other activists responded to the COP26 finance-themed day with a protest against “Greenwashing”. 

“There’s been too many words, not enough action,” said one protester, Janet, dressed in a hard hat and high visibility jacket emblazoned with the slogan “build back greener”. 

Delegations will spend the coming days thrashing out details of the Paris Agreement rulebook, including rules governing carbon markets and a unified “stock take” on emissions cutting plans.

Although organisers say they want COP26 to keep the 1.5C heating limit within reach, the UN says the most up-to-date climate pledges put Earth on course to warm 2.7C.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament on Wednesday that negotiations “have a long way to go”. 

“Whether we can summon the collective wisdom and will to save ourselves from an avoidable disaster still hangs in the balance,” he said. 

– ‘Destroy consensus’ –

On Tuesday leaders committed to lower their emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — by at least 30 percent this decade.

Experts said the pledge could have a significant impact on short-term heating. 

But a two-day world leaders’ summit ended with barbed comments from the two largest emitters, the United States and China. 

US President Joe Biden criticised counterpart Xi Jinping for skipping the summit, after China declined to sign the methane pledge.

“It just is a gigantic issue and they walked away,” Biden said before leaving Glasgow.

He said the same was true of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is also missing the talks.

But China and Russia pushed back on that assessment. 

And in a sign the acrimony could sour negotiations, China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua told reporters late Tuesday he did not support shifting the temperature warming goal to 1.5C, from a less ambitious Paris cap of “well below” 2C.

“If we are to only focus on 1.5C, it means we are destroying this consensus between all parties,” Xie said. 

burs-pg-klm/pg/bp

Focus at the COP26 summit turned Wednesday to how the world will pay for its ambitions to quit fossil fuels and help vulnerable nations survive climate change, as campaigners expressed scepticism over promises of billions from financiers and governments.    

After a world leaders’ summit yielded a landmark deal slashing methane emissions, negotiators are now tasked with keeping alive the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But a simmering diplomatic spat between the United States, China and Russia over their climate action ambitions showed the fragile nature of talks aimed at averting disastrous global heating.

With funding crucial for turning climate pledges into reality, a financial coalition representing trillions in private capital made net-zero pledges on Wednesday. 

COP26 president Alok Sharma said there was “big momentum” from the private sector. 

But he acknowledged that governments of wealthy nations failed to honour a key pledge to help poorer nations green their energy grids and respond to increasingly extreme drought and flooding.   

He told the conference it was “regrettable” that the decade-old vow to provide $100 billion annually had not been delivered by 2020 as promised and would likely not be met until 2023. 

Delays in the funding have reopened tensions between vulnerable nations, often the least responsible for emissions, and polluting richer countries.     

“Climate finance in 2021 is as volatile as the strengthening storms that rip through the fabric of our economy year in year out,” Fiji’s Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum told the conference, adding it was still unclear in what form the money would come in.  

“How many years until we wake up and realise that we have built a system that actually destroys the planet by design,” he said, slamming continuing subsidies for fossil fuels. 

– Net zero? –

But former Bank of England governor Mark Carney told the conference the global financial system “has been transformed to deliver net zero”. 

With billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, he is spearheading an initiative by a group of 450 banks, insurers and pension funds with $130 trillion in assets to help countries achieve carbon neutrality.  

Carney said the Glasgow Financial Alliance would help the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “at the latest”.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the conference mobilising private capital was “essential”. 

“No amount of public financing alone will be sufficient to meet the demands of the climate crisis,” she warned.

But campaign groups reacted with scepticism, pointing out that funds involved were still investing heavily in oil and gas.

“The commitments they have made are so full of loopholes, that there is plenty of space for some of the worst financiers of the worst polluters on the planet,” said Kenneth Haar of the Corporate Europe Observatory.

– ‘Long way to go’ –

And on the streets of Glasgow, Extinction Rebellion and other activists responded to the COP26 finance-themed day with a protest against “Greenwashing”. 

“There’s been too many words, not enough action,” said one protester, Janet, dressed in a hard hat and high visibility jacket emblazoned with the slogan “build back greener”. 

Delegations will spend the coming days thrashing out details of the Paris Agreement rulebook, including rules governing carbon markets and a unified “stock take” on emissions cutting plans.

Although organisers say they want COP26 to keep the 1.5C heating limit within reach, the UN says the most up-to-date climate pledges put Earth on course to warm 2.7C.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament on Wednesday that negotiations “have a long way to go”. 

“Whether we can summon the collective wisdom and will to save ourselves from an avoidable disaster still hangs in the balance,” he said. 

– ‘Destroy consensus’ –

On Tuesday leaders committed to lower their emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — by at least 30 percent this decade.

Experts said the pledge could have a significant impact on short-term heating. 

But a two-day world leaders’ summit ended with barbed comments from the two largest emitters, the United States and China. 

US President Joe Biden criticised counterpart Xi Jinping for skipping the summit, after China declined to sign the methane pledge.

“It just is a gigantic issue and they walked away,” Biden said before leaving Glasgow.

He said the same was true of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is also missing the talks.

But China and Russia pushed back on that assessment. 

And in a sign the acrimony could sour negotiations, China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua told reporters late Tuesday he did not support shifting the temperature warming goal to 1.5C, from a less ambitious Paris cap of “well below” 2C.

“If we are to only focus on 1.5C, it means we are destroying this consensus between all parties,” Xie said. 

burs-pg-klm/pg/bp

The Earth’s largest whales may eat up to three times more than previously thought with crucial benefits for the ecosystems they inhabit, a study said Wednesday.

The largest creatures ever to live on Earth, baleen whales including blue whales, humpback whales and other species use filter feeding to consume krill and small fish.

But their massive size and fragile populations made it difficult to answer a fairly basic question: just how much they eat.

To find out, a study published in Nature describes how researchers placed suction cup tags equipped with movement sensors on 321 whales to monitor their feeding practises.

They used sound waves to measure the density of krill swarms before and after feeding, and found that a single blue whale can eat about 16 tonnes of krill during a feeding day.

“It’s an animal the size of an aeroplane engulfing the volume of a swimming pool in a matter of seconds,” study author Matthew Savoca of Stanford University told AFP.

“Imagine running three marathons while eating as much as possible and doing that most days of a summer feeding season,” he said, “it’s really incredible.”

Using daily measurements for seven species in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, the study estimates pre-whaling populations may have consumed up to 430 million tonnes of krill annually — twice the total krill estimated to exist on Earth today. 

– Positive feedback loop –

After eating massive amounts of iron-rich krill, whales’ waste plays an essential role in making that crucial nutrient available to the rest of the ecosystem — particularly phytoplankton.

All-important phytoplankton are tiny organisms that are not only the base of every open ocean food chain, they also provide much of the Earth’s oxygen and are an important carbon sink.

“In open ocean systems nutrients are hard to come by for phytoplankton,” said Savoca.

“Whales act as these highly mobile krill-recycling machines. The nutrients that the phytoplankton need are locked inside the krill and the whale intestines are used to unlock that iron.”

This positive feedback loop may answer the question of  why krill populations have declined along with whales instead of prospering in the absence of the huge predators.

An estimated 1.5 million baleen whales were harvested in the 20th century from the Southern Ocean.  

“For blue whales that was over 99 percent of their population,” Savoca says, “No natural system can stand an onslaught like that.”

The study says that if whale populations were to be restored, the positive feedback loop they generate could spark a “green wave” of ocean ecosystem recovery.

It notes that while whaling is currently only allowed by a handful of countries, whales face existential threats from climate change, collisions with large ships and entanglement in fishing nets.

Savoca said that in addition to designating marine protected areas, measures to limit climate change are crucial, as well as regulations on shipping speed and fishing practices. 

He said the benefits of whale population recovery would extend to the whole planet.

“Not only will there be more krill, there’ll be more fish and a healthier ecosystem,” he said.

Blue whales can grow up to 34 metres long and weigh over 150 tonnes, making them slightly shorter but far more massive than the 37-metre, 70-tonne Titanosaur, considered to have been the largest dinosaur to have existed.

Battered by drought, floods and famine they had little part in creating, vulnerable African nations are seeking billions of dollars at COP26 to boost their defences against climate change.

Many view the Glasgow climate summit as the last chance for world leaders to save humanity from its devastating consequences.

For wealthy economies, the key aim has been cuts in carbon emissions to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

But for African countries, the biggest issue is finding enough money to help struggling economies to limit emissions but also adapt to the adverse impact of the changing climate.

The chairman of the African Union, DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, said Africa could not do it alone.

“As a continent that only contributes three percent of greenhouse gas emissions, Africa cannot be left on its own to manage their increasingly harmful effects,” he said at a meeting to accelerate adaptation in Africa on Tuesday.

It’s not a new challenge.      

Rich nations in 2009 promised to muster up $100 billion annually to help poorer nations worldwide cope with climate change.

But that aid has still not fully materialised even as vulnerable nations are increasingly ravaged by disasters linked to climate change, from deadly floods in South Sudan and Niger to devastating famine in Madagascar. 

“More than 1.3 million people are facing a food crisis,” Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina said of the famine currently ravaging his country. 

“My countrymen are paying the price for a climate crisis that they did not create.” 

– ‘Injustice is stark’ –

The African Development Bank (ADB) and the Netherlands-based Global Center on Adaptation have launched a $25-billion programme to help Africa adapt.

The African continent has secured half of those funds via the ADB, and has called on developed countries to provide the rest.

But the money “will not fill the funding gap for adaptation”, said DR Congo’s Tshisekedi. 

ADB head Akinwumi Adesina called for more spending on adaptation, or measures to alleviate the effect of climate change, than on mitigation, or reducing its causes.

He said spending should at least follow a 50/50 ratio, like at his bank where 63 percent of earmarked funds go to adaptation.

Britain’s COP president, Alok Sharma, said there had been a gulf between needs and the international response so far.

“The need is great and the injustice is stark,” he said.

He announced $197 million in new funding for African adaptation from the UK government.

– ‘Stand up and help’ –

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on nations in part responsible for climate change to step up.

“Citizens and leaders across the regions have seen what’s coming, and they want to stop it,” he said.

“The world, especially those countries that contributed to the crisis in the first place, must stand up and help.”

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said investing in adaptation made sense as it “is also development”.

For example, “when we protect our forests… the world must pay for that”, she said.

It should pay “also when we cut carbon emissions by sinking carbon”, she said.

Gabon is already cutting its carbon emissions by reducing deforestation and forest degradation.

Under another ground-breaking initiative, the Seychelles has swapped millions in sovereign debt for conservation funds to protect the ocean.

Tshisekedi urged donors to wrap up funding to accelerate adaptation in Africa by the next COP summit to be held in Egypt in.

“We simply can’t wait any longer,” he said.

Environmental groups on Wednesday slammed the organisers of the COP26 climate summit for preventing thousands of experts from monitoring negotiations, warning their absence could weaken commitments needed to limit global heating.

Under the United Nations-led process to implement the goals of the Paris Agreement, civil society groups are allowed to attend annual talks as observers.

While there are rules governing their activity inside the negotiation rooms, their presence offers a chance to hold decision makers to account. 

They are particularly vital for global south countries, which are already dealing with the fallout of decades of failed climate pledges.

Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International, said that out of the thousands of environmental organisations who had sent representatives to Glasgow for COP26, just four people had been granted access to monitor talks. 

“Preventing civil society from watching governments and holding them accountable could have real climate consequences with communities on the front line of the climate crisis suffering the most,” she said. 

“Even though this is a critical moment for the planet’s future, it’s becoming harder than ever to hold polluters’ feet to the fire.” 

COP26 was delayed a year due to Covid-19 and is taking place as the pandemic drags on in developing nations that still lack widespread vaccine access.

Host Britain had said it would offer vaccines to delegates who wished to attend in Glasgow, but many observers couldn’t afford the hotel quarantines they would need to make the trip.

– ‘Shambles’ –

COP26 President Alok Sharma said in May that the summit needed to go ahead in person and would be “the most inclusive COP ever”.

But the reality facing thousands of experts, many of whom have travelled all the way to Glasgow only to watch plenaries and press conferences online, is different.

“It’s an utter shambles to see civil society locked out of crucial meetings and many not even able to get into the COP venue,” Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based think tank Power Shift Africa, told AFP.  

“Civil society members from some of the poorest countries in the world were told this would be the most inclusive COP ever so they travelled here to advocate for their communities.  

“And now here they are here many are told the only way to access the meeting is via an online platform that barely works,” he said. 

COP26 has also been beset by access issues, with delegates queueing for hours awaiting airport style security checks and the Israeli energy minister, who uses a wheelchair, unable to enter on Monday.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “organisers are working extremely hard to make every element run smoothly” in Glasgow. 

UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa told reporters Wednesday to “take into consideration” the space constraints imposed by Covid-19 measures.

“The fact that we are operating in a Covid context has completely changed the way we can put the premises at your disposal.”

But Sebastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Centre for International Environment Law, said there was “outrage” among observers.

“We need the voices of those who are directly impacted by climate change to inform the negotiation and to provide public scrutiny,” he told reporters. 

“Covid-related restrictions cannot justify the fact that our entire network cannot access negotiations.”

The world’s top-selling carmaker Toyota has come joint last in a Greenpeace ranking of carbon emission efforts by auto firms, according to a list published Thursday during the COP26 climate summit.

The campaign group gave Toyota and US-European firm Stellantis “F minus minus” grades for decarbonisation efforts including phasing out engines that burn planet-warming fossil fuels in favour of electric vehicles.

Minimising carbon emissions in the supply chain and reusing or developing greener technology for car batteries were among the factors examined in the report that compared 10 major automakers.

General Motors received the least damning rating with a C- grade, followed by a D for Volkswagen and D- for Renault.

All the other firms, including Ford, Honda and Hyundai-Kia, were rated F plus or minus.

“Toyota, the world’s number-one car seller last year, is the most stubborn in holding onto internal combustion engines,” said Ada Kong, senior project manager of the auto industry campaign at Greenpeace East Asia.

The Japanese giant is also “most vocal in such advocacy, domestically and abroad”, Kong said in a statement.

Toyota, which releases its earnings later Thursday, said in September it would invest 1.5 trillion yen ($13.2 billion) in batteries for electric and hybrid cars by 2030.

It declined to comment ahead of the publication of the emissions report, in which Greenpeace urged automakers to embrace fully-electric vehicles.

“Some Japanese companies, such as Toyota, are confident that hybrid technology is an effective alternative to the internal combustion engine,” the report said.

“However, the real-world emissions reduction and fuel economy of hybrid vehicles are not as good as expected,” it said, noting that plug-in hybrids only reduce emissions by an estimated one-third, compared with petrol or diesel cars.

The assessment came as world leaders met in Glasgow this week as part of the COP26 climate conference — billed as vital for the continued viability of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Greenpeace said none of the 10 auto firms had announced plans to phase out combustion engines before 2035, which would make the 1.5-degree goal “almost impossible”.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday issued an emergency use listing for the India-made Covaxin vaccine, in a move expected to increase Covid-19 jabs available in poor countries.

The vaccine, made by India’s Bharat Biotech and with a 78-percent efficacy rate after two doses over a month “is extremely suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements,” the UN body said.

Covaxin is the first vaccine completely developed and manufactured in India to receive WHO approval.

Unlike mRNA vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that have emerged as leading jabs against Covid-19, Covaxin uses the more traditional “inactivated” technology that has been used for decades in vaccines against diseases like polio, seasonal influenza and rabies.

The technology uses a dead version of a germ that causes a disease to boost the immune response.

One of the main advantages of such vaccines is that they are more easily stored that mRNA jabs, which need to be kept at sub-zero temperatures. This makes them easier to distribute, especially in poor countries that may lack the needed facilities.

Covaxin can be stored between 2-8 degrees Celsius (36-46 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the company website.

India welcomed the move, with Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar tweeting that it “facilitates travel for many Indian citizens and contributes to vaccine equity.”

– Group of eight –

Covaxin becomes the eighth vaccine against Covid-19 on the WHO’s list, including others from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm and Sinovac.

WHO emergency approval, which includes an assessment of clinical trial data, can speed up international recognition of vaccines.

It also allows their use by fellow UN agencies and the global Covax initiative, set up to immunise people in the world’s least-well-off countries.

India has administered 121.2 million shots of Covaxin, around 11 percent of the total.

The vaccine, developed by Indian drug maker Bharat Biotech together with the Indian Council of Medical Research, was given “emergency approval” in India earlier this year without completion of phase 3 human trials.

Despite criticism from doctors and health workers over the lack of data, the company and India’s drug regulator insisted it was safe for use.

The firm says it has completed phase 3 trials but has yet to publish the results. In July, releasing “pre-print data,” the company claimed that an overall efficacy of 77.8 percent against symptomatic Covid-19 patients had been found.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the vaccine in March this year as India started rolling out its mammoth vaccination programme, which has now seen more than a billion shots given.

The delay in WHO approval has been a cause of worry for many Indians, in particular students, who have had problems returning to their universities abroad.

As of now, around a dozen countries recognise the two-dose vaccine, including Greece, Iran, Mexico, Nepal, Zimbabwe and as of this week, Australia.

India has also exported Covaxin to a number of countries including Iran, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

Brazil suspended a deal to import 20 million doses of Covaxin from India after corruption allegations.

Owned by husband and wife, Krishan and Suchitra Ella, Bharat Biotech set up in 1996 and has delivered over three billion vaccines for several diseases including Zika and Hepatitis-B.

Focus at the COP26 summit turned Wednesday to how the world will pay for its ambitions to quit fossil fuels and help vulnerable nations survive climate change, as campaigners urged caution over promises of billions from financiers and governments.    

Negotiators are tasked with using the remaining days of the Glasgow meeting to try to keep the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach, after a world leaders’ summit yielded a landmark deal slashing methane emissions.

But a simmering diplomatic spat between the United States, China and Russia over their climate action ambitions showed the fragile nature of talks aimed at averting disastrous global heating.

With funding crucial for turning climate pledges into reality, hundreds of financial groups representing trillions in private capital made net-zero pledges on Wednesday, while British Chancellor Rishi Sunak said that COP26 would deliver on a decade-old promise to help poorer countries cope with climate change.

“We know that you’ve been devastated by the double tragedies of Covid and climate change,” he told the conference. 

He said richer nations would finally provide $100 billion annually to help poorer nations green their energy grids and respond to increasingly extreme drought and flooding.

Delays in the funding, which missed its 2020 target, have reopened tensions between vulnerable nations, often the least responsible for emissions, and polluting wealthy nations.      

Fiji’s Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said developing nations were expected to “suck it up”, adding it was still unclear in what form the money would come in.  

“Climate finance in 2021 is as volatile as the strengthening storms that rip through the fabric of our economy year in year out,” he told the conference.

– Net zero –

The private sector is ratcheting up its climate pledges, with a coalition of 450 banks, insurers and pension funds with $130 trillion in assets announcing they would help countries achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.  

Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney said the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero would finally provide the capital flows needed after years of broken promises from rich emitters.

“The architecture of the global financial system has been transformed to deliver net zero,” he said. 

“We now have the essential plumbing in place to move climate change from the fringes to the forefront of finance so that every financial decision takes climate change into account.”

Carney said the alliance would help the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “at the latest”.

Campaign groups reacted to the alliance with scepticism, pointing out that funds involved were still investing heavily in oil and gas.

“The commitments they have made are so full of loopholes, that there is plenty of space for some of the worst financiers of the worst polluters on the planet,” said Kenneth Haar of the Corporate Europe Observatory.

– ‘Long way to go’ –

And on the streets of Glasgow, activists from the group Extinction Rebellion responded to the COP26 finance-themed day with a protest against “Greenwashing”. 

Delegations will spend the next 12 days thrashing out details of the Paris Agreement rulebook, including rules governing carbon markets and a unified “stock take” on emissions cutting plans.

Although organisers say they want COP26 to keep the 1.5C heating limit within reach, the UN says the most up-to-date climate pledges put Earth on course to warm 2.7C.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament on Wednesday that negotiations “have a long way to go”. 

“Whether we can summon the collective wisdom and will to save ourselves from an avoidable disaster still hangs in the balance,” he said. 

– ‘Destroy consensus’ –

On Tuesday leaders committed to lower their emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — by at least 30 percent this decade.

Experts said the pledge could have a significant impact on short-term global heating. 

But a two-day world leaders summit ended with barbed comments from the two largest emitters, the United States and China. 

US President Joe Biden criticised counterpart Xi Jinping for skipping the Glasgow summit, after China declined to sign the methane pledge.

“It just is a gigantic issue and they walked away,” Biden told journalists before flying out of Glasgow.

He said the same was true of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is also missing the talks.

But China and Russia pushed back on that assessment on Wednesday. 

And in a sign the acrimony could sour negotiations, China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua told reporters late Tuesday that he did not support shifting the temperature warming goal to 1.5C, from a less ambitious Paris cap of well below 2C.

“If we are to only focus on 1.5 C, it means we are destroying this consensus between all parties,” Xie said. 

burs-pg-klm/pg/rl

Environmental groups on Wednesday slammed the organisers of the COP26 climate summit for preventing thousands of experts from monitoring negotiations, warning their absence could weaken commitments needed to limit global heating.

Under the United Nations-led process to implement the goals of the Paris Agreement, civil society groups are allowed to attend annual talks as observers.

While there are rules governing their activity inside the negotiation rooms, their presence offers a chance to hold decision makers to account. 

They are particularly vital for global south countries, which are already dealing with the fallout of decades of failed climate pledges.

Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International, said that out of the thousands of environmental organisations who had sent representatives to Glasgow for COP26, just four people had been granted access to monitor talks. 

“Preventing civil society from watching governments and holding them accountable could have real climate consequences with communities on the front line of the climate crisis suffering the most,” she said. 

“Even though this is a critical moment for the planet’s future, it’s becoming harder than ever to hold polluters’ feet to the fire.” 

COP26 was delayed a year due to Covid-19 and is taking place as the pandemic drags on in developing nations that still lack widespread vaccine access.

Host Britain had said it would offer vaccines to delegates who wished to attend in Glasgow, but many observers couldn’t afford the hotel quarantines they would need to make the trip.

– ‘Shambles’ –

COP26 President Alok Sharma said in May that the summit needed to go ahead in person and would be “the most inclusive COP ever”.

But the reality facing thousands of experts, many of whom have travelled all the way to Glasgow only to watch plenaries and press conferences online, is different.

“It’s an utter shambles to see civil society locked out of crucial meetings and many not even able to get into the COP venue,” Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based think tank Power Shift Africa, told AFP.  

“Civil society members from some of the poorest countries in the world were told this would be the most inclusive COP ever so they travelled here to advocate for their communities.  

“And now here they are here many are told the only way to access the meeting is via an online platform that barely works,” he said. 

COP26 has also been beset by access issues, with delegates queueing for hours awaiting airport style security checks and the Israeli energy minister, who uses a wheelchair, unable to enter on Monday.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “organisers are working extremely hard to make every element run smoothly” in Glasgow. 

Sebastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Centre for International Environment Law, said there was “outrage” among observers.

“We need the voices of those who are directly impacted by climate change to inform the negotiation and to provide public scrutiny,” he told reporters. 

“Covid-related restrictions cannot justify the fact that our entire network cannot access negotiations.”

The corals might be doomed, his country is still at risk of being swallowed by rising seas and he has recently survived an assassination attempt, but former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed is feeling optimistic.  

Nasheed, who is representing dozens of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries, is at COP26 to call on world leaders to make good on their promises to help nations on the front line of global heating.

A veteran of climate diplomacy, Nasheed made headlines in 2009 when he persuaded his cabinet to don scuba gear and hold an aquatic meeting among the coral reefs that ring his Indian Ocean archipelago. 

“Ten years later on, where are we?,” he told AFP. 

“I think we’ve moved a long, long, long way forward.”

Though some countries still need to scale up their climate ambitions, Nasheed said that now he dares to believe that the Paris agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is possible.

“I believe now people have understood the gravity of the issue,” he said, referring to the onslaught of climate change-fueled weather disasters this year, from record-shattering heatwaves in North America to devastating floods in Europe. 

“It is an election issue now, that is why world leaders have joined the rhetoric.”

A particular sore point at the Glasgow gathering is the failure of rich nations to honour their pledge — first made in 2009 — to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 for countries facing the worst climate impacts.

Last week, they laid out a plan for hitting the target only in 2023 — although United States climate envoy John Kerry this week said funding the funding might reach the target next year.

The Climate Vulnerable Forum that Nasheed represents is calling on richer nations to meet the $100 billion target. 

It also wants the debts of vulnerable nations to be restructured so that part of their repayments can be repurposed into spending on projects to help soften the blow of climate change.

Nasheed had a message for world leaders: “think about your children and your children’s children”.

“In the Maldives, we were the first generation to see the reef, because we were the first generation to be able to have goggles and masks and equipment and go diving and snorkelling,” he told AFP. 

“Sadly, we are the first generation to see the reef die as well. We must make sure we rehabilitate the reef and hand over the reef in the pristine, colourful manner that we saw it.”

– ‘Nature as infrastructure’ –

Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions, pushing many species of corals past their limits of tolerance.

The UN’s climate science advisory panel, the IPCC, projects that global warming of 1.5C will see 70 to 90 percent of all corals disappear. 

But Nasheed refuses to give up, calling for innovative solutions to climate challenges. 

“We want to find resilient coral,” he said.

“We want to find a sand grain that will hold water and not have mudslides. We want perhaps a tree that doesn’t burn.”

Nasheed said the aim was to “use nature as infrastructure”, but that these adaptation projects need money.

– ‘It’s not just us’ –

The delays in funding from wealthy nations have exacerbated tensions between richer countries, largely responsible for global warming, and those poorer countries suffering most from its effects.

“You did not invent the internal combustion engine to murder me. But finally, this is where it is going to. And would you compensate for that?” Nasheed said.  

But he added that the past could not be used as an excuse to continue to pollute.  

“It’s like saying that the West has brought us to the brink and the new big emitting countries have a right to push us off the cliff,” he said. 

Ultimately, “we want to survive and we want you to survive as well,” he said.  

“It’s not just us now. When we go down, the whole ship goes down.”

Nasheed, currently the speaker of parliament in the Maldives, was critically wounded in a May assassination attempt outside his home in the capital Male.

He said it had made him believe “we are here for a big purpose”. 

“We can’t be pessimistic, we can’t lose hope. If we lose hope, where do we go? What do we do?”