Fears overshadowing economic interests cast a shadow over the Glasgow Climate Summit

Damascus-SANA

With the exacerbation of the repercussions of the phenomenon of climate change from severe floods, forest fires and drought seasons, and amid large protests pressing to take strict measures to protect the earth, attention is turning to the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit “COP26”, which will start next week in the Scottish city of Glasgow at a time when many countries have expressed their The occupation of climate issues as a priority in their political agendas.

The summit, which, according to Western media, carries an “ambitious program” to combat climate change puts the leaders of the polluting countries in front of a great challenge that is forbidden to fail in light of the catastrophes the planet is witnessing, especially since these leaders are the ones who pledged to reach carbon neutrality by the middle of this century.

Observers believe that the Glasgow summit will be the most important climate event since the Paris summit in 2015, at a time when climate scientists' data paint a bleak picture of the situation, as a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last August that the Earth's temperature has already increased by 1.07. degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, which will have major and enormous repercussions on the climate.

According to the report of the authority, one of the repercussions of the phenomenon of climate change is the rise in sea water levels by about 20 centimeters since 1901, and although this number appears to be small, it exposes hundreds of thousands of people each year to displacement due to floods in low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, for example, in addition to increasing rainfall. Heavy rains are 30 percent in some areas more than usual.

The repercussions of the phenomenon of climate change do not depend on floods, but also include an increase in drought periods, as the average duration of drought at the world level may reach two months in the case of the increase in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and to four months in the case of an increase in warming by two degrees, but if the matter exceeds three degrees Centigrade, the drought period may reach ten months, in addition to the high risk of forest fires.

Those concerns were expressly expressed a week ago by the President of the Conference of the Parties to Climate Alok Sharma, who saw that reaching a global agreement by the end of the climate summit would be more difficult than the Paris conference in 2015, explaining that getting about 200 countries to commit to emissions targets to limit global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees Compared to pre-industrial levels it is a "daunting task".

The British Independent newspaper saw in its report that there is ample evidence indicating the possibility of the failure of the Glasgow climate summit in a way that leads to the collapse of the climate talks completely and a return to ground zero due to the leaders of the concerned countries giving priority to their economic interests over the issue of climate change, especially the “climate extremists” in the government of US President Joe Biden.

In conjunction with the Glasgow summit, the Italian capital is preparing to host the G20 summit, which is expected to cast a shadow over the climate issue, and this is reflected in the warning of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during a press conference from Rome on the eve of the summit that “the world is rushing recklessly towards a climate catastrophe,” calling on the leaders of the G20 The G20 "to do more to help poor countries" and expressed his hope that this summit would help overcome the threat to the world.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, in turn, considered that the convening of the G20 summit constitutes a return to multilateral action after bleak years of isolation and isolation related to the health crisis due to the spread of the Corona virus, calling on the G-20 to the need to limit global warming, given that the countries of the group represent 80% of emissions the scientist.

According to a draft statement of the meeting of the leaders of the Group of Twenty countries in Rome reported by Reuters, the leaders pledged to take urgent steps to limit the rise in global temperature to a range of 1.5 degrees Celsius to meet the existential challenge of climate change, at a time when the peoples of their countries around the world are preparing to express their frustration about the their policies.

Perhaps one of the other most prominent challenges that is at the fore in the work of the Rome Summit is the issue of health equality and recovery from the epidemic and the stage that follows it, at a time when international circles see an opportunity to make a qualitative shift from harnessing health for the purposes of the economy to harnessing the economy for the purposes of health for all.

Fahmy El Shaarawy