Britain’s Alok Sharma, chair of the COP26 conference to be held in Glasgow, said that the climate crisis “has not subsided” during the siege caused by the Coronavirus, and “we all have a role to play” when it comes to confronting its consequences.
Thus, the President of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, which will be held in the Scottish city at the beginning of November, summarized the spirit of the event whose main themes were addressed during the “Road to COP26” conference organized by the United Kingdom Embassy in Madrid on Monday.
In addition to Sharma, the Spanish Minister for Environmental Transformation and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, and the Italian Minister of the Environment, Roberto Singolani, as well as the ambassadors of the United Kingdom and Italy to Spain and about twenty experts in environmental policy, business, finance and NGOs.
Adapting to climate change
Reducing emissions, adapting to climate change, financing the most vulnerable countries, and strengthening the rulebook of the Paris Agreement are the points that Sharma believes it is necessary to work on laying the foundations for green and clean growth that “will belong to all.”
The importance of COP26 was also highlighted by the British Ambassador to Spain, Hugh Elliot, who described it as a “priority for British diplomacy around the world”, because it would demonstrate the true commitments of the signatories to the Paris Agreement and would make it a “process”.
However, Spain’s fourth vice president and minister for ecological transformation, Teresa Ribera, admitted that “at the moment we are not starting with good news” because, after reviewing 48 national plans, UN experts have confirmed that governments are “far from the required level of ambition”.
Reducing emissions
That is why 2021 will be a year for “credible contributions” to reducing emissions in the medium and long term, Ribera insisted, while Italy’s Minister for Environmental Transport, Roberto Singolani, chose the European Green Pact as “a key tool to accelerate the economy and create green jobs.” “.
Circular economy, energy efficiency, sustainable mobility and reducing food waste were some of the concepts around which the contributions of the experts revolved.
Glasgow Mayor Susan Aitken emphasized the role of political leaders and businessmen in “facilitating change” in the citizens’ way of life and explained “how this will benefit them.”
Aitken emphasized that “we are not lacking in technology, but we need investment and resources” when converting current obstacles into opportunities and creating a “new green economy”.
For civil society representatives who participated, increased ambition and efforts to achieve emissions neutrality by 2050 are imperative, so COP26 should act as a “catalyst for avoiding climate catastrophe”.
This will require more funding, warned the director of the International Labor Organization in Spain, Joaquín Nieto, who estimated € 100,000 million (more than $ 120,000 million) annually the amount needed to achieve climate goals and end the crisis. Generated by the epidemic.
Comply with the Paris Agreement
Faced with this situation, Friday For Future Spain spokesperson Diego Veraz called for “binding agreements to comply with the Paris Agreement”, so as not to resemble the Glasgow meeting of COP 25, which was a failure “in her view, and declared a” strike against climate inaction “on March 19 .
Business representatives emphasized the progress made in recent years in the environmental transformation. Iberdrola’s climate change director, Gonzalo Sainz de Meira, said, “We are not aware of the technological revolution that we are witnessing,” because renewables are no longer “too complex or too expensive,” although he has identified “we need goals and policies related to green” As well as alliances to work together. “
At the closing ceremony of this symposium, the Italian ambassador to Spain, Ricardo Gariglia, summarized the discussions by stating that the response to the climate crisis “has led to social, economic and technological processes that can no longer be stopped” and in which “we all act together”, so “the way we live in The future will be different from what we lived until the epidemic. ” Everdy
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