By William James and Simon Jessop
ANTALYA, Turkey, Nov 12 (Reuters) – World leaders have set out competing positions and made clashing demands in two days of intense speech-making at the COP31 climate change talks in Turkey, leaving negotiators with a tough task to draft a meaningful deal that all can agree.
Small island states, among the most vulnerable in the world as global warming makes sea levels rise, pleaded for urgent cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
European leaders, meanwhile, lined up behind a proposal to expand global electrification, developing countries asked for more finance from rich ones, and fossil fuel producers said oil, gas, and coal should continue to be used.
“We reaffirm our sovereign right to strengthen our energy and oil industry as a driver of our national development,” Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez told the conference, after UN leaders had made the case for bringing to an end the age of fossil fuel.
Apart from trying to accommodate incompatible national positions aired on Wednesday and Thursday, conference host Turkey and negotiations lead Australia also have the challenge of trying to make progress when wars and inflation have pushed climate concerns down the political agenda.
“It’s my job to steer consensus, not to bang tables and demand any particular action, but to steer consensus to the strongest, most ambitious possible outcome within the constraints of that consensus-driven process,” Chris Bowen, Australia’s COP31 president of negotiations, told Reuters.
Asked what a good deal might look like, he said: “I have many more hours of consultations with partners to do.”
Climate activists say short-term political concerns should not get in the way of addressing an issue that will get more pressing if ignored.
A UN report last month found the world was already on course to break through the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit that countries had agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
“The situation could not be less under control. The planet is not dying. It is being killed,” Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said on the sidelines of the UN conference.
“It is being killed by the very same people often thought to come to our rescue. No one is coming to our rescue.”
BRITAIN’S BURNHAM BACKS RENEWABLES
Earlier on Thursday, the leaders of small island states including the Bahamas, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Saint Lucia called for swift action.
“Major emitters must move beyond the usual promises. They must reduce emissions that the climate crisis demands,” said Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham backed a proposal by Turkey to increase electricity’s share of world energy consumption to 35% by 2035, from a little over a fifth now, to help advance that goal. Turkey has not specified whether the extra energy used would be renewable.
Burnham told the conference that energy supply disruptions from the US-Israeli war with Iran and Russia’s war with Ukraine showed clean energy was the wise choice.
“It is now plain for everyone to see that if we depend on energy we do not control, then we leave ourselves exposed to prices we cannot control,” he said. “The shift to clean energy is the only route to energy security.”
Developing countries reiterated requests that they have made during many years of UN talks for rich countries to provide more finance to help them shift to cleaner energy, adapt to a warming world, and repair climate-driven destruction.
Fernanda de Carvalho, the head of climate policy for the World Wildlife Fund environmental group, said he found the leaders’ speeches underwhelming, especially as COP31 is the first UN conference since scientists have publicly said the world is set to breach the 1.5C threshold.
“It is worrying that the climate issue is not as high on the global political agenda as it needs to be,” he said.
(Reporting by William James, Valerie Volcovici, Simon Jessop, and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; editing by Barbara Lewis)
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