The Madrid summit, hosted by the UN, has failed to arrest the severity of global warming and its impact on developing countries because the more developed countries refused to compromise on finances, carbon mitigation and so on. The concluding note pays only lip service to concerns about climate change. The conference initially showed the signs of coming up with some viable plan when it was extended for two days but later it emerged that the gathering of 200 delegates was just an upscale get-together. The rich countries conveniently looked the other way, instead of chipping in their finances to tackle climatic concerns shown in scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UN Environment Programme also highlights the gap between current greenhouse gas emissions and the limit over the coming decade.
The theme for this year’s UN climate conference was “Time for Action”, demanding acceleration of the measures for effective implementation of the Paris Agreement in 2020. A few delegates called the conference a requiem to the Paris Agreement, thanks to countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia and others to water down all attempts of setting a strategic global financial target according to which developing countries could plan projects and initiatives. Adviser to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam headed the Pakistani delegation at the summit. He was visibly disappointed too.
“From the start COP25 was designed as a working meeting leading up to the Paris Agreement initiation in Glasgow next year. With the US confirmation of their pull-out, the deliberate burning of the Amazon forests and the last minute shift to Madrid, it started with lost momentum and deflated expectations,” the media reported him as having said. Pakistan has, however, tried its best to show its strong resolve to go along with the process; it has launched financing ideas like the Ecosystem Restoration Fund. Pakistan also announced at the COP25 about its decision to join the mangrove led Blue Carbon alliance and the eight-country high-mountain impact group for the Hindu Kush Himalayan region.
The world (read the developed world) needs to raise $100 billion a year from 2020 to address climate related issues of the developing countries, create a framework to address loss and damage from climate events and make it easy to transfer technology across countries.
Source: https://dailytimes.com.pk/521864/dismal-end-to-un-climate-conference/
