Glasgow climate summit was high on words, but low on action – Scroll.in

Of the many pledges and announcements that were made, one of the standout declarations was by India, which promised to achieve carbon neutrality by 2070.

Critics, however, said this statement in the summit agreement was not enough.

“Glasgow did not deliver 1.5 degrees Celsius,” said Li Shuo, senior global policy advisor, Greenpeace East Asia.

The other main objective of the summit was to lay down a clear pathway to end the use of coal.

However, Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, a Washington-based non-profit, had a different take.

What the summit did achieve was to lay out some rules for carbon trading and offsets, a vital part of the Paris pact that has been stalemated in the previous two United Nations Climate Change Conferences at Katowice in Poland and Madrid in Spain.

Still, the guidelines on carbon trading will be counted as a positive, particularly for India, other experts said.

The Glasgow pact failed to take any action on loss and damage other than reiterating that it requires more attention.

Others were more scathing.

Even on health, the outcome of the summit failed to please experts.

One of the main reasons for this was the reluctance of wealthy nations to commit more funds to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to the adverse impacts of global warming.

In fact, most of the progress at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference took place in the first week, when a couple of important agreements were signed to stop deforestation and restrain the release of methane, a greenhouse gas many times more harmful than carbon dioxide.

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