Smoke rises from an illegally lit fire in Amazon rainforest reserve, south of Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. After the world missed out on a year of negotiations on climate change due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is an added urgency for every country, including Malaysia, to get going on saving planet Earth. - Photo: AFP
It was a diplomatic faux pas on a global stage: During a recent US-organised virtual climate summit, French President Emmanuel Macron was delivering his country’s pledge on reducing carbon emissions when the screen suddenly switched to Moscow, showing his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, conversing privately with his aides, oblivious that leaders from around the world were looking at him.
Thankfully, the technical hiccup didn’t ruffle any egos or reveal embarrassing private talk, and after Putin delivered his speech, the screen switched back to Macron and the summit continued.
With the often fraught relationship the United States and France have with Russia, the moment could’ve scuttled the meeting all together. That it didn’t only goes to show that when it needs to, the world can overcome political tensions and come together on climate change – or, as US President Joe Biden put it, “the greatest existential threat of our time”.
Broadcast live on YouTube on Earth Day, the two-day summit on April 22 and 23 saw the participation of 40 countries as well as luminaries like Bill Gates and Fridays For Future organiser Xiye Bastida, the 19-year-old Mexican-Chilean climate activist.
The summit – to which Malaysia was not invited – sought to draft a path leading towards the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (better known as COP26, or the Conference of Parties) in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
Yet with only a handful of countries invited to give their views – there are over 190 signatory parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – how effective was the April summit really in addressing climate change issues? While countries like the China, Russia, the US and those in the European Union have journalists parsing through the words in their speeches to nail down and report on their exact pledge, there has not been much reported of the voices of developing nations like Bangladesh and Indonesia that continue to urge for more financing and aid to deal with the climate crisis.
The Marshall Islands, for example, was the only Pacific country invited to the summit, and in the words of President David Kabua, “We are barely above sea level”.
For this country and others in the Third World which are more likely to bear the brunt of the climate crisis, the existential threat is very real indeed.
Recent climate models have projected that the world is likely to cross the threshold when global warming becomes irreversible between 2027 and 2042. This doesn’t exactly give us much time to take action and makes it even more important for all of us to get Glasgow right.
The magnificent beaches of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean will disappear when climate change causes sea levels to rise. 'We are barely at sea level, ' points out President David Kabua. — Pixabay.com
Where is Malaysia in all this?
Malaysia was not invited to the summit because, according to our Water and Environment Ministry, we are not regarded as either extremely vulnerable nor financially extremely poor when it comes to managing climate change; neither are we among the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases at the global level.
The summit, according to ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Zaini Ujang, was just one way for the United States to show the world that it is back at the negotiating table after its abrupt withdrawal from the Paris Agreement ordered by former president Donald Trump in 2016.
“They want to come back and [they] want to pay the price by hosting the summit. The summit has nothing to do with the Paris Agreement. It’s just for American diplomacy, ” says Zaini during a recent interview.
As a non-Annex One country, Malaysia is considered a developing country whose obligation under the Paris Agreement is “Nationally Determined Contributions” or NDCs. (Annex One parties include industrialised countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.)
NDCs are national plans comprising the actions, targets, policies and measures put into place by the government in response to climate change and as a contribution to global action.
Malaysia, says Zaini, is in the midst of updating our NDCs, which have to be discussed with the various stakeholders such as state governments and agreed upon.
“We want to do this by June 2021 and we need to submit it, ” he says, adding that the most important thing is to ask every stakeholder to commit to achieving the NDCs.
The process will involve updating both policy and technical components of the NDCs in line with decisions by the UNFCCC.
“The NDCs’ achievement status will be reported to the National Steering Committee on Climate Change chaired by the ministry and also to the Malaysia Climate Change Action Council (MyCAC) chaired by the Prime Minister, ” explains Zaini.
Malaysia will also prepare its Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy under the 12th Malaysia Plan period (2021-2025), which the ministry hopes to complete by December.
“The details of the 12th Malaysia Plan will be revealed at a later stage by the Economic Planning Unit; the document is currently at final preparation stage, ” he says.
In 2015, during negotiations for the Paris Agreement, Malaysia had pledged a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2020 and a 45% reduction by 2030. As Malaysia prepares for Glasgow, the question is: Did we manage to achieve our 2020 target?
It’s an urgent question because a World Bank report put our carbon emissions in 2005 at 7.12 metric tonnes per capita while in 2019 this rose to 7.67 metric tonnes.
According to Zaini, though, we need to understand what exactly Malaysia pledged under the UNFCCC, which is the emissions intensity reduction target.
“The emissions intensity target is calculated by dividing emissions from key economic targets with the Gross Domestic Product figure. This is an economy-wide approach and represents the status of Malaysia as a developing nation.”
The per capita emissions figure, says Zaini, does not represent the efforts made by the country towards reducing emissions.
“Sometimes, per capita emissions allow misinterpretation of the issue because a country with high emissions and a large population often has lower per capita emissions and vice versa, ” he explains.
Besides drafting a Climate Change Act and developing a tracking tool for emissions reductions efforts in government agencies, Malaysia will, from 2024 onwards, start preparing the Biennial Transparency Report for the UNFCCC, which will have more stringent and transparent reporting requirements and standards, says Zaini.
Commitment or just talk?
It’s a missed opportunity that Malaysia was not invited to the summit, says Renard Siew, Climate Change Advisor at the Centre for Governance and Political Studies.
“We may be a comparatively smaller country but our voice matters.
“We are one of the 12th most megadiverse countries in the world and have a role to play in demonstrating real leadership in this space, ” argues Siew, who thinks the April summit was a “strong symbolic statement” of the United States’ commitment to rejoining the Paris Agreement.
“(And) it invited different countries to reaffirm that positioning, ” he points out.
The US pledge to cut its national greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% below its 2005 levels by 2030 – announced by Biden during the summit – shows “a real commitment to the cause”, and Siew hopes this will spur other developed countries to step up their game.
“Developed countries can always do more and support developing countries in terms of financial or technological resources.
“I just hope that they don’t remain in an ‘aspiration’ phase but will do the actual groundwork, or ‘implementation’, to see it happen, ” he says.
Protesters holding images of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left) and Biden at a demonstration held near the White House, Washington DC, before the April 22 virtual climate summit. The protesters were calling for stranger and more urgent action from governments to address the climate crisis. — Reuters
Bogged down
There is a very real fear of that happening. For years, climate meetings have been criticised by activists, scientists and world leaders for achieving very little despite drawn out talks that can last late into the night. In fact, Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, 18, who did not attend the US summit, has denounced the pledges made by the US and other countries as “hypothetical targets”.
But with only six years to go before the deadline for irreversible change, the task at hand in Glasgow has become ever more urgent, especially since the world has had to miss out on a year of negotiations due to restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
If anything, the pandemic has shown us that it isn’t just the climate crisis that makes it vitally important to tackle deforestation: Losing primeval forests exposes us to zoonotic diseases like Covid-19.
The pandemic is also a reason there could be further delays in Glasgow thanks to the glacial rollout of vaccines in much of the rest of the world compared with the vaccination rates in Britain, the EU and the US, where a significant percentage of the population has been inoculated.
Siew describes Glasgow as the “most important meeting of our century since the Paris Agreement.”
“A total of 195 member countries have all agreed that we will work together to cap temperatures from increasing by 1.5°C. Yet, in a recent UNFCCC report, even with all the global commitments that have been made, we are only on track to cutting down emissions by 1%. We need to increase this by 45% to have any hope of achieving the Paris target, ” he laments.
Siew is, however, optimistic that the Glasgow meeting will go on despite the agonisingly slow vaccine rollout.
“Most people are generally hopeful that the COP meeting will still happen in Glasgow despite the pandemic. It might be a scaled down version but nothing is stopping key parties from having online meetings, ” he says.
On the call for more financing by developing countries – something Malaysia is also earnestly pursuing – Siew says while it is true that funding has definitely increased to support both climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, money is a resource that countries can never have enough of.
“We need to be strategic in our allocation of funds and prioritise ‘co-solutions’ that address both mitigation and adaptation at the same time.”
He cites the example of planting mangroves along the coast – not only does this mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon but it also acts as an adaptation measure in stabilising shoreline erosion, reducing storm surges and preventing soil salinisation. It’s a “co-solution”.
For Malaysia, as part of the country’s existing post Covid-19 Recovery Plan, the Water and Environment Ministry is in the midst of accessing international climate funds via the Green Climate Fund, says Zaini.
The funds will go towards developing climate-resilient recovery strategies and incorporating them into a Green Recovery Plan as part of stimulus packages.
The MyCAC, says Siew, recently conducted a workshop on climate mitigation and adaptation, engaging key stakeholders, including government representatives, civil society organisations, think tanks and corporations, for input.
“While results are still being consolidated, it would be good to see greater climate ambition from our country, ” he adds.
Glasgow, as opposed to the more genteel Edinburgh with its hilltop medieval castle, is often considered a working class city. When, or if, delegates actually do descend on the city in November, they will certainly have a lot of work ahead of them.
