What should be the key outcomes from COP26?

Mirette F. Mabrouk

Developed international locations have to put their cash the place their mouths are

When the U.N. Local weather Change Convention (COP26) kicked off on Oct. 31, the politics is more likely to have been as difficult, if no more so, than the problems of local weather change.

It didn’t bode significantly properly when Chinese language President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned they wouldn’t attend in individual. China and Russia are the world’s highest and fourth highest greenhouse fuel emitters respectively, with China alone emitting a jaw-dropping 27% of complete international emissions. China is one thing of an oddity. Regardless of being the world’s largest producer of renewable power know-how and merchandise, nearly 60 % of its power is produced by coal. Much more distressingly, from a local weather change perspective, the nation has financed 240 coal-powered crops in Africa and Asia as a part of its Belt and Highway Initiative, and it’s feared that these crops will produce nearly 50% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2050.

These crops are a part of the opposite political elephant within the room: the demand by developed nations that rising economies hurry up and clear up their acts by switching instantly to wash power. To rising economies, this demand, coming from nations which have been polluting because the Industrial Revolution, and have successfully accounted for half of all carbon emissions, regardless of being lower than a sixth of the planet, smacks of hypocrisy. Final month, the BRICS international locations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) lambasted the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, calling it “discriminatory.” The laws, signed in July of this yr and aiming to come back into impact in 2026, successfully taxes the carbon content material of products.

The BRICS nations, nonetheless, are comparatively rich in contrast with many rising economies. The latter would presumably be delighted to spare their residents the well being points attributable to air pollution, which, in flip, takes a toll on their economies, however they lack the funds to do it. Even worse, a lot of them are in debt to international locations like China, struggling to repay these coal-powered crops.

There’s excellent news, nonetheless, if developed markets are ready to do one thing constructive: put their cash the place their mouths are.

Renewable power merchandise have turn into considerably extra cost-efficient over time. The worth of solar energy modules, for instance, has dropped to lower than 0.2% of what it was within the mid-Seventies. It may possibly make sense for poorer international locations to go inexperienced, if they’ve assist establishing the know-how within the first place. That is the place developed international locations can are available. Strategic financing for renewable power in rising economies is a viable, and very important, step towards getting them to go inexperienced. There are, in fact, impediments. China, for instance, has a vested curiosity within the debt accrued from coal-powered crops throughout Africa and Asia and it will require inventive considering to carry it round. Nonetheless, developed nations, and particularly the U.S. and the EU, needn’t let that decelerate their efforts. There’s a massive and assorted toolbox readily available and plenty of choices to assist make the transition, amongst them new renewable power know-how and carbon offset schemes.

If developed nations need rising markets to go inexperienced, then it is not going to be sufficient to ask, they must actively assist them get there. In the end, it’s in their very own pursuits.

Mirette F. Mabrouk is a senior fellow and founding director of MEI’s Egypt Program.