COP 26 and climate change politics: Unequivocal failure

YOU do not need to be a scientist or politician to understand climate change politics. Even an illiterate person of any country of the world is able to realize and understand changes of climate. Because climate change are visible and undeniable reality. All the people of Asia Africa Europe and other regions have been unnecessarily facing the worst impacts of climate change. Unnecessarily, because climate change is human-induced, so it is clear through the research and studies-- human beings are responsible for changing the climate.

Those responsible people emitting carbon and changing the climate are the leaders of the industrialized countries. They are selfish, greedy, profiteering, inhuman leaders that do not care about the lives and livelihoods of the poor people of the poor countries of Asia, Africa and other regions globally. As a result, climate change and global warming caused indescribable worst sufferings of millions of people. And killing innumerable innocent people silently for no reasons! That is why together we must put an end to these atrocities of those autocratic leaders. Moreover, we never believe in their lip service. We will have to move forward with the demand and direct action that, "stop climate change now".

The reality is: the loss and damage due to climate change is immeasurable. Though the scientists and researchers are giving us some reports but those are inadequate. The loss and damage due to climate change is unprecedented and unpredictable. So we need more and more evidence-based reliable data, authentic information of every vulnerable country including Bangladesh to address all the issues timely, properly, and perfectly integrated.

Regarding environment and climate change issues, experts observed that earth's average temperature has risen approximately one degree Fahrenheit in the last 50 years. By the end of this century, it will be several degrees higher, according to the latest climate research. It's changing rainfall, causing heat waves, and making sea level rise, all of which create human suffering.  Documentaries feature in Bangladesh, here flooding may create 20 million climate refugees by mid-century.

As many of you know that the Glasgow, United Kingdom Climate Conference COP (Conference of the Parties) 26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is over recently. So the climate talks and negotiations at the COP 26 climate summit the representatives from almost 200 nations were tussled over every word in the agreement, hoped to secure a deal. So now it's a good time to reflect on where we have stood on climate action, compared to two weeks ago when the summit began.

For COP 26 to get the world on the path of limiting global warming to 1.5? this century, a few key conditions were to meet. That outcome was uncertain at best. Considering all those failures the climate experts called COP 26 and climate change politics: unequivocal failure. So Climate Change Conferences have failed to produce a model of global governance that can tame power politics. Amid the noise of the global talks, environment activists broke through with a powerful speech at the summit's outset. They warned world leaders that a 2? increase in global temperatures would be a death sentence for the climate-vulnerable countries.

The World Biodiversity Summit was launched too as an in-person and digital event alongside COP 26 in Glasgow. The event gathered stakeholders across public and private sectors and attendees from across the globe. The Summit focused on strengthening cross-sectoral collaboration and sharing actionable methods on how to scale up investments using the required nature-based solutions. World Biodiversity Summit served as a springboard in our long-term goal of creating an ongoing actionable network for cross-sectoral commitments. And to raise ambition, action towards biodiversity restoration as a bridge to climate change solutions. Though the Summit marked some solutions to biodiversity restoration as a key contributing factor in solving climate change, but the experts observed -- those were insufficient.

In fact, we need to escalate public-private collaboration to channel investments in nature-based solutions to forestry and land management, resilient food systems, regenerative agriculture, and to the blue economy. There is a substantial amount of untapped potential for innovation and technology to support all of our planet's systems, however, a paradigm shift in our consumption patterns is required.

In terms of agriculture, in an authoritative 2017 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a global team of researchers crunched data on the effect of rising temperature on yields of wheat, rice, corn, and soybean. It together provided about two-thirds of human caloric intake worldwide. They found that each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0 percent, rice by 3.2 percent, maize by 7.4 percent, and soybean by 3.1 percent. So the time is now to work on climate-resilient agriculture.  

On October 28, days before the launch of COP26, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the United Nations arm that looks at global trade, issued a report declaring that debt relief and restructuring for developing countries should be put firmly on the climate agenda. So the next Conferences of the Parties (COPs) need to commit not just reducing emissions, but to inverting the structures of debt in the Global South.

So considering the vulnerabilities of the neglected Mountainous regions, as a matter of urgency, the groups asked COP 26 to approve a decision point mandating UNFCCC to arrange such a meeting, or Cryosphere Dialogue at the next inter-sessional climate conference. It is scheduled to be held in Bonn in June 2022. Cryosphere is the part of the earth's surface characterized by the presence of frozen water.

"Nations in High Mountain Asia already are seeing the effects of glacier and snowpack loss.  What these negotiations lack is an understanding that these changes will not be temporary.  The higher the temperature, the greater the permanent damage," says Dr Pema Gyamtsho, Director General of  the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) , headquartered in Kathmandu, Nepal.  "It is much harder to grow back a glacier, than to keep it from disappearing in the first place.  And these losses of water resources will be irreversible," Pema added.

So UNFCCC must urgently create space for Parties and stakeholders to discuss actions to be taken in response to this cryosphere crisis and other issues. The groups noted that despite the dire consequences narrated in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),  released in August 2021 there has never been a full discussion of projected changes, especially their irreversibility at the climate talks. The UNFCCC has in the past held Dialogues on oceans and terrestrial systems or lands; but never on the earth's cryosphere. This science is so clear, yet complex; and the changes so drastic and permanent that more dialogue is essential earlier, experts emphasized.  
The writer is a journalist, author,
storyteller, and environment
activist in Bangladesh