8 November, 2016IndustriALL's director for sustainability Brian Kohler blogs from the twenty-second Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) opened on 7 November in Marrakesh, Morocco.
COP21 in Paris produced the Paris Agreement, a landmark treaty to control greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming to 2 Celsius degrees (1.5 if feasible). The Paris Agreement came into legal force on 4 November, with over 100 nations having formally ratified it. COP22 is therefore about negotiating the implementation details of the Agreement. There is a sense that some governments have been taken by surprise with the speed at which the Paris Agreement has come into force.
There is room for optimism, with some countries undertaking massive projects in renewable energy. Yet 2016 will very likely be the warmest year, globally, on record and greenhouse gas emissions remain on a trend that, unless changed rapidly, will deliver global warming in the 3 to 4 Celsius degrees range, rather than a safer and agreed to 1.5 to 2.0 range. Reaching these targets will require a massive scale of investments and implementation of new technologies that is unprecedented, yet the $100B climate fund remains only partially realized.
Thus far, only a few nations have entered into a serious discussion of Just Transition measures.
Over the next two weeks, trade unions will coordinate our presence at the various negotiating meetings and side events to both make our views known and to track progress.
Stay tuned.