UN climate talks end, delegates appeal to Trump to join fight

Participants at the COP22 climate conference stage a public show of support for climate negotiations and Paris agreement, on November 18, 2016.

The election of Donald Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax” and has threatened to “cancel” us participation in a landmark climate deal, cast a pall over the conference in the Moroccan city of Marrakech.

As delegates questioned United States commitments under the incoming administration led by president-elect Donald Trump, donor and recipient countries have yet to agree on guidelines for how worldwide climate funding will be channeled and how the progress of emission cuts will be reported. They are hopeful that Trump will not be able to reverse the progress as the Paris Agreement has already taken effect.

Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and vowed to cut off funding to United Nations climate change programmes.

“Climate change is more than a national issue”. Paris requires commitments by all.

“Civil society made the climate change movement what it is today and will continue doing so despite changes in the political leadership that might take the process in a negative direction”, Hmaidan said. “China has seized this”.

The determination of the worldwide community highlighted the extent of the work needs to be done over the next two years. Experts say that despite the worldwide consensus, there is still no guarantee that the critical goals will be met, even the most fundamental goal of holding temperature increases to two degrees warming.

The talks also saw the first 2050 climate plans from Mexico, Canada and the USA, as well as a new commitment from 48 of the world’s poorest countries to transition to 100 per cent renewable energy as soon as possible.

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make USA manufacturing non-competitive”, Trump first tweeted in 2012.

Sheikh Mansour’s statement was delivered by Dr Thani Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment.

The minister, while reiterating what India echoed at the high level segment here, said that India has raised the issue of mobilizing the $100 billion climate funds from developed to developing countries to help them reduce their climate footprint.

Delegates will meet for two weeks in the Moroccan city to work on the rules for implementing the Paris deal, including how to measure and report emissions so that countries can be held accountable.

The BASIC ministers who met said there can be no “backtracking” on the commitments made by the developed nations and no attempts should be made to “renegotiate” the terms of the Paris agreement. With the U.S. gone from the fight, the effort to bring this level down to 2 degrees C gets that much more daunting.

“This is a group of countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change, but they are not sitting back and complaining about being vulnerable”, Jennifer Morgan of Greenpeace said. “Our task now is to rapidly build on that momentum, together, moving forward purposefully to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to foster adaptation efforts, thereby benefiting and supporting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has signed the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to limiting global temperature rises to “well below” 2C over pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to keep increases to 1.5C.