The leaders of the 20 main economies of the planet, responsible for 80% of polluting gas emissions, are debating this Sunday (31), in Rome, on the fight against climate change, among calls to send a clear message at the beginning of the COP26, in Glasgow.
“We are faced with a simple choice: we can act now or regret it later,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on the second day of the Rome summit, for whom the measures taken since the Paris agreement were “insufficient”.
While the day before the G20 has shown that even on the thorniest issues, such as a global corporate tax, they can come to an agreement, the negotiations on what the climate ambition translates in the final Rome declaration remain without great expectations.
“The time has come to do the maximum in Rome so that the members of the G20 make a useful contribution to Glasgow,” French President Emmanuel Macron told Le Journal du Dimanche, while specifying that before a COP, “nothing is wrong. is anything. ” decided in advance “.
The COP, under the aegis of the UN, is the annual meeting to debate and define commitments in the fight against climate change. And the nomination of Glasgow, which will host the event until November 12, is all the more important as the COP could not be held in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The agenda for the ministerial conference has four main themes and is so complex that negotiations will begin this Sunday, without waiting for the major speeches of some 130 heads of state and government, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.
The focus is therefore on the final declaration of the G20, but its negotiation is even more difficult because the leaders of countries like China, Russia, Japan or Mexico did not attend the summit in person, to participate by videoconferencing.
China relies on coal, a highly polluting fossil fuel, to run its power plants in times of an energy crisis, but it showed signs of change by pledging in September to stop building coal-fired power plants in China. ‘foreigner.
“Climate change cannot be denied. And climate action cannot be postponed. By working with our partners, we must face this global crisis with urgency and ambition,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted on Sunday.
“An overwhelming responsibility”
Although the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement is to try to limit global warming to 2 ° C above pre-industrial levels, preferably 1.5 ° C, the negotiation focuses on the specifics to be given. measures to achieve this, such as the timeframe to be put in place to achieve carbon neutrality.
Negotiators in Rome agreed on a target of limiting global warming to 1.5 ° C, a limit more ambitious than the Paris Agreement, three sources close to the negotiations told AFP, so as the summit continued its course.
However, the main obstacle to the negotiations is the end of the financing of coal-fired power stations and the use of this fossil energy, indicated a source to the French presidency.
“The G20 must make a special commitment to stop the construction of new coal-fired power plants from this year and to end the fossil fuel subsidy from 2025,” urged Friederike Röder, vice-president of the NGO Global Citizen.
On this second day of meeting at La Nube, Rome’s state-of-the-art convention center, Prince of Wales Charles, a guest at the summit, told leaders they had an “overwhelming responsibility” to future generations.
The last G20 press conference, chaired by the head of the Italian government, is scheduled for late Sunday afternoon. Then most of the rulers in Rome will head to the Scottish city.
“Evil alcohol lover. Twitter junkie. Future teen idol. Reader. Food aficionado. Introvert. Coffee evangelist. Typical bacon enthusiast.”