Historic moment in climate diplomacy or high mass useless ? The 28e Climate Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which ended on December 13, 2023 with a new text mentioning a “transition towards an exit from fossil fuels”will play its future in the coming years.
A fragile diplomatic synthesis, the Dubai agreement may be another missed opportunity if states, caught up in short-term contingencies or led by climate-sceptical leaders, decide to sweep it aside. “The COP represented a great step forward, but the concluding text does not determine what the actors will do with it. The rules of a sport do not indicate whether a player will perform well on the field.quips François Gemenne, political scientist and specialist in climate migration.
2024 will already be a crucial year. Firstly because governments will have to start thinking about their nationally determined contributions, the commitments they will have to present to the UN in 2025. And the coming months will be punctuated by important deadlines which could influence these policies climatic.
Populist surge
More than half of the world’s inhabitants of voting age are called to the polls. Sixty-eight countries are holding elections. Among them, large emitters of greenhouse gases like India, a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants, which will elect its elected representatives to the lower house. Will the big favorite, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), party of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, start working on a transition of its energy system to reduce its dependence on coal?
The European elections, which will be held from June 6 to 9, are important for debates within the European Union (EU), one of the most ambitious players in the COPs. Even if the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55% in 2030 cannot be called into question so easily, the push of populists in France, Italy and especially in the countries of Eastern Europe East, still very resistant to climate measures, would complicate the EU’s position within climate diplomacy.
Other countries affected by global warming, such as Indonesia or South Africa, will also elect new parliamentarians. “The words of the COP are just words and they will have no consequences if the leaders of the most emitting countries do not change their policiesnotes Sonia Seneviratne, climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Switzerland). In reality, they must go even further, because the Dubai text is very far from allowing the planet to remain below 1.5°C of warming when every tenth of a degree counts. »
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