Tribune. COP26 will be a moment of clarification in the young history of the Paris Agreement. The challenge is to remedy three shortcomings that today threaten his mind: lack of ambition, lack of solidarity and lack of concrete plans that commit tomorrow. Why this COP, undoubtedly the most important since COP21, is the subject of so special expectations? It is first of all the moment of the effective application of the Paris Agreement, taking over the Kyoto Protocol. It is also the first test of the “mechanism to enhance ambition”, central element of the agreement that States commit to review their goals up every five years.
The observation is severe: While this COP takes place with one year delay due to the pandemic, we are still far from the account in terms of ambition. Indeed, the sum of our current commitments leads us rather to a trajectory of 2.7 ° C of warming by the end of the century, and not the threshold of 1.5 ° C provided for in the Paris Agreement . A dark observation, so. The G20 countries have a key role to play because the greatest economies are all guilty in one way or another of this ambition deficit in the light of the climate emergency. Even European countries, in the most ambitious theory, are late.
In total, four courts of justice (Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France) reminded their government that their policies were not in line with the commitments made in Paris. At COP26, France, alongside other European countries, must fight for the process to accelerate and that the journal upwards commitments becomes an ongoing process. We lost five years, under the influence of Trump’s administration and the COVID-19 crisis.
Multilateralism and Solidarity
At COP26, France must also make the champion of international solidarity that is sorely lacking. But the balance of the Paris Agreement is based on multilateralism and solidarity towards the most vulnerable countries, first to pay the price of an economic model that is rarely theirs. Developed countries, including France, have committed in the negotiations to be mobilized $ 100 billion (86 billion euros) a year to meet the needs of these countries to reduce their emissions and adapt to the impacts of change. climate. This figure is a symbolic minimum of which we are getting closer as well as bad, while these same governments have mobilized hundreds of billions for their own economic reminders. This shift launches a very bad signal before negotiations.
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