Trump's Climate Deniers cast shadow over Marrakech

As the world’s leading experts on climate change met at COP22 in Marrakech on November 7 to discuss the future of the planet, some are beginning to fear that US President-elect Donald Trump could yet derail plans aimed at ensuring the future safety of the global environment. Trump has been clear in his opposition to the deal struck in Paris last year; he has also said that he would scrap the program which is meant to target existing coal-fired and natural gas power plants, with a goal of reducing greenhouse emissions in the US by as much as 32 per cent by 2030. One of Trump’s primary targets is the Clean Power Plan which US President Obama unveiled to transform the US electricity sector, but is seen by many of its critics as a “war on coal.”

The plan is currently being contested and is expected to go before the Supreme Court in early 2017. The Marrakech Conference of Parties (CoP22) is significant because it serves as the first meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement, which was signed during the COP21 summit in Paris last year. The key areas, especially pertinent to India and developing nations, include agriculture, a topic, skirted so far by the UNFCCC and not even mentioned explicitly in the Paris agreement. But agriculture is one of those key nodes in the climate change equation that cannot be ignored.

As global population expands, there is a need for expansion in agriculture as well but at the same time agriculture contributes about 15 per cent of total emissions which go up to 30 per cent when emissions from forestry and other land use changes are taken into account. Another big talking point regarding agriculture will be international cooperation in terms of finance and technology transfers. Small countries such as Bangladesh have asked for international support in order to reduce emissions from agriculture beyond five per cent. But international funding for adaptation and mitigation in agriculture has been a trickle so far. The Paris Agreement, for the first time, put mitigation and adaptation to climate change on equal footing. But a coherent plan of action is lacking.

Climate-related impact is increasing in severity and developing countries bear the brunt. It has taken almost two decades in climate negotiations for loss and damage to be treated as an issue as it will at COP22. There is however a clear and present danger, with a new President-Elect in the US who does not believe in climate change, which may just lead to an unravelling of all that has been painstakingly achieved so far. The first step has already been taken in the appointment of avowed climate change denier Myron Ebell to head the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team.

 – Hemanth Subramanian, programme manager-media, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi