The 1.5°C Reader
9 NOVEMBER 2021
The world is on track for disastrous levels of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at the UN COP26 summit.
8 NOVEMBER 2021
Antigua and Barbuda's Environment Minister Joseph: "We are being responsible global citizens. We are cleaning up our environment. And at the same time, we have been victims of the polluters."
7 NOVEMBER 2021
Agreements on deforestation, methane and coal were welcome news. Less so was some countries’ absence from major initiatives.
8 NOVEMBER 2021
As the second week of the annual UN climate talks in Glasgow—also called COP26—gets underway, negotiations are entering the crunch period. After all the speeches and a flurry of voluntary initiatives announced by politicians in the first week, it’s now time for real talk about what countries will actually commit to doing as part of an agreement. Specifically, will Glasgow deliver a transparent, robust and inclusive agreement to help keep global climate goals within reach, ramp up climate finance for developing countries and address the loss and damage caused by extreme unavoidable climate impacts?
→ READ MORE ON UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
4 NOVEMBER 2021
The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has proposed a resilience-adjusted Gross National Income (GNI) measure for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to access concessional finance.
Termed the Recovery Duration Adjuster (RDA), this measurement framework better reflects the economic, social, and environmental realities of SIDS, including those in the Caribbean region. The framework is based on two key principles. Firstly, it takes a holistic view of development needs and incorporates underlying structural weaknesses, high debt levels, and insufficient investment in resilient infrastructure as important inputs in determining the extent of a country’s vulnerability to exogenous shocks.
5 NOVEMBER 2021 - GEORGE MONBIOT
By framing the pittance they offer as a gift, rather than as compensation, the states that have done most to cause this catastrophe can position themselves, in true colonial style, as the heroes who will swoop down and rescue the world.
4 NOVEMBER 2021 - MICHAEL MANN
To borrow from the iconic film The Usual Suspects, the greatest trick the fossil fuel industry ever pulled was convincing the world that climate action would require sacrifice, for just the opposite is true.
→ READ MORE ON THE NEW STATESMAN
5 NOVEMBER 2021
CASTRIES, St Lucia — The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has committed to working with tourism stakeholders on Climate Change, and announced that it has become a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism.
3 NOVEMBER 2021
Political leaders are showering financial titans with praise at global climate talks. But their show of pageantry and back-patting is masking a deeper concern: that the banking industry’s pledges to help fight global warming are vague and unenforceable.
2 NOVEMBER 2021 - LESLIE HOOK - JOANNA S KAO
In 2009, rich nations promised they would send at least $100bn a year in climate finance to poorer countries by 2020. That understanding formed the basis of the 2015 Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C, ideally 1.5C.
“Suddenly you had this really emblematic ‘$100bn’ — where, unless you work this out, it is difficult to have the global agreement [at COP],” recalls Josué Tanaka, who helped launch the climate finance unit at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “It became the signal, the base of trust, between developed and developing countries.”
But last week, on the eve of COP26, donor countries admitted they missed that target in 2020. Now they expect to reach it in 2022 or 2023, years later than planned.
Everyone agrees there should be more money for climate finance. But that is where the consensus ends.
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