This year, COP, less colloquially the Conference of the Parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, turns 30. It is being held in the Brazilian city of Belem, close to the mouth of the Amazon River and its rainforests, one of the Earth’s major controllers of climate patterns.
It’s a highly symbolic siting. Home to about 1.4 million people, Belem was specifically chosen because of its proximity to the world’s biggest river by volume, whose average discharge accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s total freshwater release to the oceans.
The river’s massive drainage basin is home to many indigenous communities whose people live cheek-by-jowl with the development pressures being foisted on to forested land and the repercussions of mass-scale deforestation on carbon emissions, the climate, the environment and wildlife habitats.
The usual delegates — politicians, advocates, environmentalists, fossil-fuel company employees and their lobbyists — are making their way to the city for 12 days of meetings, which start on Monday.
Among them are an official New Zealand delegation of 15, including Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, representatives from the Opposition and the National Iwi Chairs Forum, and government officials.
The annual nature of the event, the many thousands who travel to attend it and the dubious intentions at COP of some of the organisations and nations which produce and promote oil and gas may make one rather cynical about the point of it all and whether the meetings are doing much good for the world.
However, nobody has yet come up with a better way of getting so many of the key players together in a serious or constructive way. It’s a chance for us to try to save the Earth we know and thrive on, and do something for millions of vulnerable people whose lives and livelihoods are already threatened by rising sea levels and severe weather events.
The excitement of the 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty agreed by 195 countries at COP21, has faded in the rear-vision mirror, as it becomes clear the world is already on the cusp of breaching the target to limit temperature rise this century to 1.5°.
A pessimistic view from scientists is of a 2.5° increase by 2100, with catastrophic effects on habitats, the oceans and the terrestrial environment, but that is by no means inevitable.
United Nations Secretary-general Antonio Guterres laid it on the line at the preliminary COP30 summit this week. The Guardian reported him saying the 1.5° mark was a "red line" to keep the planet habitable.
Every fraction of a degree above that would mean "more hunger, displacement and loss — especially for those least responsible. This is moral failure — and deadly negligence". Even breaking the target temporarily would have dramatic consequences, he said.
What is New Zealand bringing to the COP30 table? Is there much we can be proud of, in terms of our commitment to reducing emissions, being a good global citizen and maintaining an enviable international reputation?
The short answer to those two questions is — very little, and no. It’s true we do have a second nationally determined contribution, announced earlier this year, which aims to cut net greenhouse gas emissions by 51-55% below gross 2005 levels by 2035.
However, compared with other countries’ NDCs, which call for far greater reductions, this is judged as insufficient and unambitious by climate analysts.
This week the government reaffirmed its own view of the importance of climate change by further slicing up the already eviscerated Zero Carbon Act from 2019, which had been praised here and internationally for the way it coalesced science and politics with public opinion.
The latest changes abolish the Climate Change Commission’s advisory role, dilute the frequency of its progress reports and remove the Emissions Trading Scheme from the stated NDCs.
Perhaps staying in the hotel room in Belem will be one way our delegation can avoid criticisms we no longer take this issue seriously?
