As COP26 enters its second week, climate and energy experts from the University of Delaware are sharing their opinions about the proceedings, including pressing issues, conference goals, and future outlooks. In this entry, Jennifer Horney, Founding Director and Professor in UD’s Epidemiology Program and Core Faculty at the UD Disaster Research Center, shares her thoughts.
What is the most pressing issue in climate change today?
In the long-term, creating tangible steps for limiting global emissions to keep temperature rise below 1.5 C is the most pressing issue. The most pressing short-term issues for disaster epidemiologists are related to reducing the human health impact of disasters in terms of morbidity and mortality. All-hazards preparedness and risk reduction are critical components of climate adaptation through a human health lens.
What is your takeaway from COP26 so far?
There have been pledges to end fossil fuel emissions, reduce methane emissions, and end deforestation, but the outstanding question is how credible are those pledges?
What are you hoping to see in the time left in COP26?
Plans for financing (both for mitigation and adaptation measures) at a global level will be interesting to watch in the time left at COP26. Much of the first week has been centered on mitigation. In Week 2, I am looking forward to seeing adaptation take a larger share of the stage. Additionally, the global pledges for climate finance are insufficient to meet the objectives set forth in the Paris Agreement – how will the discrepancies between finances and objectives be negotiated?
What do you think of the goals that COP26 set for itself (net zero by 2050, adapt to protect communities and ecosystems, mobilize finance, and work together)?
Net zero makes lowering carbon emissions and meeting thresholds more manageable for Parties, but it does not fully realize the objective of keeping temperature rise under 1.5C. Unfortunately net zero and zero are not equivalent, and focusing on reaching net zero emissions by 2050 will perpetuate global inequities in development opportunities and progress.
In Copenhagen, wealthy nations pledged $100 billion USD annually to support mitigation and adaptation measures to poorer and developing nations by 2020. This hasn’t happened. Even if the $100 billion USD pledge comes to fruition, this is a drop in the bucket for the scale of the problem. Having the goal to adapt to protect communities and ecosystems is vitally important, but there aren’t concrete points on who and where those communities and ecosystems are and how they will be financially supported in their undertakings.
Collaboration on a global scale is precarious but absolutely necessary to reach the goal of keeping temperature rise under 1.5C. An important discussion to have regarding global collaboration is both who is and who isn’t in Glasgow. Some of the biggest emitters – Russia and China – don’t have heads of state present. Jair Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil, where 430,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed in 2021 alone, is not present. Only four Pacific Island nations have been represented by heads of state at COP26, in part due to financial and logistical strains due to COVID-19 that have not affected larger and wealthier nations.
