Rethinking climate ambitions

VICKI ASSEVERO

AS THE world awaits the inauguration of president-elect Joe Biden to confirm the United States’s return to multilateralism, climate change negotiations top the list for this promised re-engagement.

The naming of former secretary of state John Kerry as climate envoy signals that the US will not only rejoin the Paris Agreement but also that the world’s environmental and ecological challenges demand intense global diplomacy. For the first time, a seat on the National Security Council is reserved for climate change.

Caribbean nations should take note and begin to campaign in earnest for a broader view of hemispheric security that focuses more on ecological communities, biodiversity, and coastal protection, energy and food security rather than on the governance failures of our neighbour. Innovation and productivity gains in these areas would go a long way towards creating the livelihoods that anchor the many different types of “security” needed to accelerate prosperity in our hemisphere.

It is in this context that the statement by China’s President Xi Jinping at the virtual Climate Ambition Summit on December 12 is worth dissecting. China and the US, in that order, remain the largest greenhouse gas emitters.

Xi made three succinct points:

1. Only through multilateralism, unity and co-operation can the benefits of collective action on climate change be shared.

2. The need to raise the world’s ambition and create a new architecture for shared responsibilities.

3. The need to build confidence that our world can profitably embrace lifestyles that produce a “green” recovery.

It is striking that in announcing further Chinese commitments to lower carbon emissions, increase renewable energy use and plant more forests, Xi emphasised raising ambitions and building confidence. These represent the intangibles of diplomacy – along with building, or more appropriately, rebuilding trust.

As one of the world’s most effective climate champions, Kerry created a non-partisan advocacy group with the shock title World War Zero, whose goal was to hold more than ten million climate conversations with citizens across the political spectrum. This epitomises the kind of ambition that Xi expects in order to advance collective action.

That same ambition is reflected in the AOSIS’s (Alliance of Small Island States) Placencia Ambition Forum 2020, where 44 island countries banded together specifically to encourage and drive greater ambition in the preparations for COP26 (United Nations Climate Change Conference). Only 75 countries were provided the opportunity to deliver statements at the Climate Ambition Summit. To have 50 per cent of Caricom member states invited to deliver statements is a testament to the ambition and determination of the region.

Hailing from a small island, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, in a seminal speech in October at the Inter-American Development Bank, said:

“We must have the cultural confidence to develop technologies of our own kind that play to our strengths and capture the imagination…”

President Xi will likely find many more leaders and activists who will welcome his call for multilateralism, great ambition and great confidence. The can-do attitude that seems to inform China’s long-term planning will be an inspiration for all of the countries negotiating their way out of a warming planet that is losing up to 55,000 species a year.

As the incoming US administration mulls over policy options on both climate change and relations with China, constructive engagement and co-ordination with China will be critical for enhancing not only climate leadership but the tangible outcomes of collective global action.

Seeing special climate envoy John Kerry holding up the hands of Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in triumph at a successful COP26 would be a welcome vision for our world in 2021.