When Union minister for environment, Bhupinder Yadav, returned from Brazil after the Climate Change conclave – COP30 – he said in an interview it was a victory for multilateralism.
The conclave had provided the structure for the rich nations to keep their promises for increased funding against global warming, he claimed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Multilateralism, or the collective forums of nations, has been the desired route to a global vision for the planet. Multilateral decisions provide common ground for the world’s progress. They also undercut to some extent parochial and regional pulls.
However, seeing what happened at COP30 and the G20 summit at Johannesburg recently, multilateralism seems to be evaporating fast. Much of the blame can be put at the door of the US’ Trump regime and its Make-America-Great-Again (MAGA) ideology; but every nation, every region is pulling hard to ensure the end of The Global Cause.
The fossil fuels wall
As the curtains came down last Saturday on the 30th annual Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, participants realized that the principal target – the phasing out of fossil fuels – remained elusive as the oil producing countries put up a stubborn wall against any mention of the subject in the conclave’s final resolution.
For the first time, at COP28 in Dubai, after much wrangling, the aim of ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’ was slipped in. However, stout opposition from the oil and gas nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia has ensured that COP29 at Azerbaijan and COP30 at Belem would avoid the subject.
The United States by choice kept away from COP30, and President Trump minced no words on Climate Change talks calling them a ‘con job’.
India’s performance in reducing global warming has unfortunately been quite pathetic too.
All eyes at Belem were on India considering it is the world’s third largest carbon emitter. But India has not yet submitted its climate and carbon reduction plan (known as Nationally Determined Contributions - NDCs) countries are required to do every 5 years.
So far, around 120 of the 196 member countries have submitted their updated plans and India is among the remaining ones.
The feet-dragging is because more than 70 per cent of India’s energy generation continues to be coal-based and there is little likelihood it will come down.
India’s defense for long has been that it is the rich nations, the original polluters during the Industrial revolution, must bear the responsibility of funding and reversing global warming.
However, Daniela Durán González, Colombia’s Climate Delegate rightly told BBC that scientific evidence indicates that more than 75 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions come from fossil fuels.
Without an agreement on phasing out fossil fuels, a reversal of global warming is impossible.
Ten years ago, when nations signed the Paris accord, it was optimism all round with the target of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius and preferably at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial times. Since then temperatures have been rising every year, glaciers are melting, islands flooding and volcanoes exploding; the Paris targets have receded into the horizon.
By the end of the century, environmental scientists say, even with the reversals of carbon emissions, we will be approaching a catastrophic rise of temperatures to 2.8 degrees Celsius.
Fiasco at Johannesburg
The recently concluded G20 summit at Johannesburg is another case of receding multilateralism. It was a diplomatic victory for President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, who was able to navigate the summit despite a strident boycott by Donald Trump. But the more important issue of coming up with a solution to the debt crisis faced by developing countries drew a blank.
The significance of the G20 bloc, which consists of 19 advanced and emerging economies, the European Union and the African Union, cannot be underestimated. It represents 85 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and roughly two-thirds of the world’s population.
The US boycotted the summit on the specious plea that South Africa was persecuting white farmers.
Trump used a non-existent domestic issue to undermine the G20 deliberations. President Ramaphosa stood firm and defended South African sovereignty. However, his central agenda, of addressing spiraling costs for servicing debt that had left African and other nations without budgets for education and healthcare, came to nought.
In October, G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs met in Washington and agreed to a consensus statement on debt.
“We recognize that a high level of debt is one of the obstacles to inclusive growth in many developing economies, which limits their ability to invest in infrastructure, disaster resilience, healthcare, education and other development needs,” they said.
Johannesburg could not come up with an answer to the debt trap.
As one think tank spokesman put it: “South Africa was outmanueuvred by larger, more economically important members of the G20 who saw little benefit to themselves in reforming the international financial architecture on debt.”
The summit ended with a googly from Trump. Since the US boycotted the summit, President Ramaphosa refused to handover the gavel for the next G20 session, to be hosted by the US. In retaliation, President Trump declared South Africa will not be invited to the next G20 summit.
Can the US exclude a member of the G20 bloc unilaterally? Can its leaders be denied visas? As the story unfolds, one thing is certain: Donald Trump has set out to undermine the bloc, and he is succeeding.
