Come September? Gone September!

?Climate action commitments from rich countries and fury of discussions during pre-COP26 almost overflowed in September 2021. Carbon Neutrality, no-Coal but new clean energy announcements echoed in various international corridors. No one described, however, how those commitments would be implemented and realised.

Particularly in 76th General Assembly of United Nations, held from 14th September to 30th September, the world saw a wide divide between the poor countries like those from Africa where food system would be severely affected due to droughts and developed economies who just made ambitious announcements to cut emissions further. While small island countries spoke about their ‘ existential threat’ due to rising sea levels, the rich and major emitters were busy regrouping themselves for the military alliance.

The pre-COP26 meeting in Milan, Italy, that ended on 2nd October 2021 last was an important event to build momentum before the decisive UN Climate Conference COP26 in early November. TERRE Policy Centre partnered with UNESCO, Centro Studi Galileo of Italy and Renewable Energy Institute of Scotland, UK organised the ‘ action event’ to inform the real actions taken on the ground towards Carbon Neutrality by the Mayor of Casale Monferrato- a city in Italy. Nearly 350 + Universities under the pledge of Not Zero-Net Zero have launched actions in India, as presented by TERRE Policy Centre as part of its project ‘ Smart Campus Cloud Network’ ( sccnhub.com).

That event in All4Climate before Pre-cop26 showed: Commitments can be matched by the actions. ‘Yes, youth can’.

Each UN Climate Conference (COP) is preceded by a preparatory meeting held about a month before, called Pre-COP. The meeting is the final formal, multilateral opportunity for ministers to shape the negotiations in detail ahead of the meeting in Glasgow in November.

The event, this year in Milan, brings together climate and energy ministers from a selected group of countries to discuss and exchange views on some key political aspects of the negotiations and delve into some of the key topics that will be addressed at COP26.

The meeting is taking place just weeks after a report by UN Climate Change found that nations must urgently redouble their climate efforts if they are to prevent global temperature increases beyond the Paris Agreement’s goal of 2C – ideally 1.5C – by the end of the century.

The issues under discussion in Milan include:

• Reducing emissions to ensure that the 1.5C goal remains within reach
• Provision of finance and support to developing countries to enable them to act on climate change
• Improving approaches to averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage from climate extremes
• Establishing a global goal on adaptation to decrease vulnerability
• Advancing the technicalities needed for countries to report on their climate actions and support needed or received
• Advancing the detailed rules for the market and non-market mechanisms, through which countries can cooperate to meet their emission reduction targets