The B.C. provincial government won a major award in the recent COP26 Climate Conference for its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet climate advocates are critiquing the lack of goals met till date.
The CleanBC program won an award at the conference for the most creative climate solution. The program pledged recently with their new “Roadmap to 2030” to cut emissions significantly with new measures and ultimately reach net zero emissions by 2050. The plan aims at prioritizing cleaner energy and reduced emissions across all sectors.
However, due to the fact that the province failed to meet the goals set for 2020, some climate experts are critical of this ambitious plan.
What is COP26?
COP26, which has been circling news headlines for the past few weeks, is an annual United Nations climate conference. Set up in the early 1990’s, COP stands for the “Conference of the Parties,” and this year is the 26th year of the conference, hence COP26.
This year, the conference is taking place in Glasgow, Scotland from Oct. 31 – Nov. 12, where world leaders gathered to discuss actionable policies to tackle climate change.
Looking back at an important year for the conference was during 2015 at COP21 in Paris. This was the year the Paris Agreement was born. This was the largest gathering of world leaders in history, when countries pledged to work together and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Not just a vague goal, but countries made plans on how they would reduce their emissions. These was called Nationally Determined Contributions, or ‘NDCs.’
However, similar to B.C.’s failure to meet its climate targets, many countries are also on the same page. Countries did not inch closer towards their goals to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Now the parties who committed to goals for 2020 in the Paris Agreement are asked to reconfigure and set tougher targets to reach by 2030.
What goals are currently being tackled?
In terms of specific targets, there are a few different areas that need to be addressed according to global leaders in order for countries to meet the targets for 2030.
Firstly, to reduce emissions and most importantly limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, countries need to curb deforestation, move faster towards cutting out coal, speed up the switch to electric vehicles, and invest in renewable energy.
As we have seen the monstrous and all-encompassing impacts of climate change this year in B.C., with ravaging forest fires and droughts, countries need to work on protecting and restoring ecosystems.
More than making idealistic goals, the conference is also calling for developed countries to pledge at least $100 billion in climate finance per year that will go towards these goals and secure global net zero emissions by 2030.
What are Canadian climate advocates pushing for?
“Success depends on rich countries like Canada following through on their commitment to help poorer nations deal with climate change. In 2016, Canada and other developed countries promised to provide US$100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing nations reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. But we haven’t contributed nearly enough,” wrote the David Suzuki Foundation team in a recent article on their website.
They add that world leaders need to focus on restoring natural areas like forest and wetlands that are crucial for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. On top of that, Canada must also stop supporting the fossil fuel industry and start supporting a much cleaner energy transition, they state.
“Indigenous voices and their calls to decolonize climate action are key to COP26 success and should be central to all negotiations,” the article said.
In response to CleanBC’s “Roadmap to 2030,” the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) noted that the impacts of climate disproportionately impact Indigenous communities and there needs to be an end to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) and fracking industry in the B.C.
“Nations around the world look to the G20 leaders to lead by example and as we are pushed to the brink of climate collapse, they can no longer afford to show up at highly publicized conferences and make promises and statements of change, only to continue to go down the emissions intensive path once home,” stated Kukpi7 Wilson at the conference.
Wilson is calling on G20 leaders to “move beyond appeasement statements to sustained action,” as we are pushing towards a complete “climate collapse.”
As COP26 comes to an end, the goals made towards 2030 are more important than ever before as the impacts of climate change are inching towards a more and more irreversible state and need immediate and serious action.
