COP 26 Faculty Reflections

November 9, 2021November 10, 2021

Marcus DuBois King

The COP 26 meeting in Glasgow is the first opportunity since the signing of the Paris Accord in 2015 for signatories to revisit voluntary greenhouse gas emissions targets. As they enter into the second week of negotiations, these countries are not on track to meet the most ambitious goal of emissions reductions that would keep the planet to 1.5ºC or 2.7ºF warming compared to preindustrial levels. With this goal potentially out of reach, they should also turn attention toward addressing two important issues for those nations most affected by climate change’s ravages, climate finance and loss and damages. It is vital that negotiations toward new financial support for climate adaptation and new mechanisms for compensating impacted nations are successful. If so, then negotiators at COP 26 can still make meaningful progress toward dealing with the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

Marcus DuBois King
Director, Master of Arts in International Affairs
John O. Rankin Associate Professor

November 9, 2021November 10, 2021

Stephen C. Smith

Environmental deterioration is probably the most important global development challenge. Climate change is harming many of the world’s poorest people; and far worse impact is already unavoidable; achieving effective resilience and adaptation is growing in urgency. Southern Madagascar is facing the “first famine driven entirely by climate change.” At COP26, various country coalitions have announced initial agreements, notably to stop funding overseas coal plants; reach international assistance targets; cut methane emissions by 30%; and stop forest destruction this decade. The scale and reliability of many commitments were doubted, but the extent of pessimism seems unwarranted. What has been accomplished so far is partial, but it is significant. Going forward, wider solutions need financing; and while climate mitigation and adaptation financing mechanisms have been established, they face daunting problems: we need better data and better projects; and better implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Even doing that, as a Dec. 2020 UN survey report argued, the almost-achieved $100 billion annual assistance target will need to become a floor, not a ceiling. Still, we must keep in mind that there is indeed room for optimism – for the results of COP26, but more importantly for the years of work ahead.

Stephen C. Smith
Professor and Chair, Department of Economics

November 9, 2021November 10, 2021

Moses Kansanga

Over the past decade, the world has made bold climate change mitigation and adaptation commitments, with the Paris Agreement seen as a landmark development in this collective struggle. COP26 is yet another celebrated gathering of stakeholders aimed at providing momentum to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Accords. This anticipated momentum is timely, given the socioeconomic toll of Covid-19 on the global economy. The extra urgency from the pandemic is expressed in the remarks of the President Designate of the COP that this year’s convention cannot be another ‘talking show’ but an opportunity to build back stronger, better, and greener. While we so much seek and need to accelerate our collective fight to limit global warming to 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, it is also crucial to reflect on the [un]intended outcomes of this journey so far. A critical area to reflect upon is the growing reliance on carbon offsetting as a climate mitigation tool and its impacts on marginalized communities in tropical countries in the Global South which are now hotspots for building forest carbon stocks. While offset programs such as REDD+ are dubbed instrumental in carbon sequestration, they are linked to widespread farmer displacement in the Global South, especially in communities where customary land tenure practices prevail. Under customary tenure regimes where farmers typically have user rights to land held in trust for them by traditional custodians, attempts by the state and private corporations to secure forests for REDD+ often result in militarized forest enclosures with little opportunity for weaker groups to continue to access forest resources. While industrialized countries rely on carbon credits from these offset programs to meet considerable portions of their nationally determined emission reduction targets, payments rarely trickle down to local communities. Unfortunately, these marginalized smallholder farmers are those impacted the most by climate change. From research in forest communities, I have come to realize that these dynamics of displacement and enclosure make carbon forest programs counterproductive because when local livelihoods are not properly integrated, forest conservation in a given geography merely leads to a displacement of deforestation to other geographies. If global scale climate change efforts, including collective decisions from COP26 are to be meaningful, we must pay attention to these micro-scale [un]intended livelihood impacts.

Moses Kansanga
Assistant Professor of Geography and International Affairs

November 9, 2021November 10, 2021

Sharon Squassoni

Activists and governments alike approached the 2021 Glasgow climate change conference – known as COP26 – knowing that bold action would be needed to avoid the worst effects of a warming world. Is nuclear energy the answer? Nuclear energy is a low-carbon source of electricity and the industry is looking to expand to new applications (like hydrogen production) and new countries. Only 32 countries now deploy nuclear energy, supplying 10% of the world’s electricity generation. Nuclear energy’s market share of electricity production has been declining for a few decades – it has not been able to surmount long-standing cost, safety, waste and nuclear weapons proliferation challenges. Next-generation reactors promise a lot but so far have not delivered. Perhaps most importantly, the world may not have enough time to “do nuclear right” if we hope to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Sharon Squassoni
Research Professor of the Practice of International Affairs

November 9, 2021November 10, 2021

Nina Kelsey

Climate politics invite cynicism. The longer I follow them, the more I notice how certain narratives recur: UN officials and environmental advocacy groups declare that this meeting is the final chance to avert catastrophe. Big nations make lofty statements, followed by near-term commitments that are substantially less so. Media profile fiery young activists as “fresh voices”. Pundits write explainers on why some apparently minor variation in wording has become a deal-breaker. Negotiations run to the last minute and usually past it. In the end, whether the negotiations are an inspiring success or a crushing failure will depend on who you ask. It’s exhausting and often baffling.

But climate policy runs on patience and optimism. There is never one moment when everything changes at the international level; but this fact obscures how much continuous change has built up over time. Enormous innovation has occurred since the early rounds of climate negotiation in the 1990s: renewable energy has gone from exotic to affordable; electric vehicles are everywhere; and battery “giga-factories” are the new crown jewel for a manufacturing economy. Changes at the political level have been equally profound: nations that had to be coaxed in the 1997 Kyoto negotiations to make emissions reduction commitments of even a few percentage points are now talking about when they could achieve net-zero, while China has become a renewable energy superpower. I would challenge observers of this year’s talks to think about climate negotiations not as bounded, make-or-break openings, but as especially salient moments in a process that is playing out continuously. Climate change is a long-term global problem; but its solutions happen year by year at the level of cities, businesses, farms, and households. Those actions aggregate up, slowly shaping over time what is possible in international negotiations. In turn, negotiations codify what we have accomplished and reflect back signals to countries, cities, and citizens. What we should ask when we watch a round of climate negotiation is not whether we arrived at a comprehensive solution, but rather whether we made the most of what chances it offers to coordinate, support, and accelerate the myriad actions that are already occurring and will continue to occur at every level.

Nina Kelsey
Assistant Professor of Public Policy and International Affairs