COP26: world leaders commit to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030

Dozens of world leaders gathered in the great UN climate conference COP26 They announced plans Tuesday to cut their emissions of the highly polluting methane and end deforestation by 2030, seeking to kickstart complicated negotiations.

On the third day of the COP26 in the Scottish town of Glasgow, the leaders, invited to participate in the hope that their presence will spur the subsequent dialogue, agreed to cut their emissions by 30% at the end of this decade. methane.

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This “is one of the gases that we can reduce more quickly”, stressed the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, together with the president of USA, Joe Biden, recalling that said gas is responsible for “about 30%” of the accumulated global warming since the industrial revolution.

The pledge was signed by more than 80 nations, including half of the top 30 methane emitters, and Biden called for “more countries to join.”

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Methane has a greenhouse effect 80 times more powerful than CO2 and its sources, such as open-cast coal mines and livestock, have received relatively little attention so far.

Argentina, a large producer of beef, joined the promise by emphasizing “the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities” between developed countries, responsible for the vast majority of emissions in the last century, and developing countries.

“The contribution of our agrobioindustry to world food security should not be excluded from the climate negotiations so as not to generate new forms of protectionism”, defended its president Alberto Fernández.

And he asked that the payment of part of his enormous foreign debt be linked to “the essential investments in green infrastructure that Argentina needs.”

Complicated negotiations

Canceled last year due to the pandemic, the COP26 Its mission is to develop the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set the main objective of limiting global warming to + 1.5ºC.

However, the negotiations are announced complicated.

On Monday, India, the fourth largest emitter of CO2 in the world, announced that it does not expect to reach carbon neutrality until 2070. This highly anticipated announcement represents a two-decade delay from most countries.

The methane pact was the second of two major announcements made in Glasgow by the heads of state and government.

The first was the promise of billions of dollars in public and private funding to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030.

“Our forests are also nature’s way of capturing carbon, pulling CO2 out of our atmosphere”, he claimed Biden.

“We have to address this issue [de la deforestación] with the same seriousness as the decarbonization of our economies “he added during an event dedicated to forests and land use.

According to the NGO Global Forest Watch, only in 2020 the destruction of primary forests increased by 12% compared to the previous year despite the economic stoppage due to the pandemic and in Brazil, the cradle of the largest lung on the planet, caused a 9.5% increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

In this context, from Brazil to China, through Russia, Indonesia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the leaders of more than 100 countries, which account for 85% of the world’s forests, signed on Tuesday the Glasgow Declaration.

Its measures include supporting activities in developing countries such as restoring degraded lands, fighting forest fires, and defending the rights of indigenous communities.

And they will be financed with $ 12 billion of public money contributed by 12 countries between 2021 and 2025, plus $ 7.2 billion of private investment by more than 30 global financial institutions.

“It is very important to be carbon neutral but it is also very important to be positive with nature”, said President Iván Duque of Colombia, a country occupied 52% by tropical forest and 35% by Amazonian land, which promised to declare 30% of its territory as a protected area in 2022.

It is eight years ahead of schedule, “because we have to act now,” he launched.

Environmental groups denounced the end of deforestation in 2030 as too late and Greenpeace called it a “green light for another decade of forest destruction.”

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Deshawn