COP26: Climate deal struck at Glasgow with India's coal pushback

Glasgow: Almost 200 nations accepted a compromise deal on Saturday aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but it contained a last-minute change that watered down crucial language about coal.

Several countries, including small island states, said they were deeply disappointed by the change promoted by India with the support of China and other coal-dependent developing nations, to phase down, rather than phase out coal power, the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. "We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe."

Nation after nation had complained after two weeks of UN climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, about how the deal did not go far or fast enough. But they said it was better than nothing and provided incremental progress, if not success.

In the end, the summit broke ground by singling out coal, however weakly, by setting the rules for international trading of carbon credits, and by telling big polluters to come back next year with improved pledges for cutting emissions.

But domestic priorities both political and economic again kept nations from committing to the fast, big cuts that scientists say are needed to keep warming below dangerous levels which would produce extreme weather and rising seas capable of erasing some island nations.

Ahead of the Glasgow talks, the United Nations had set three criteria for success, and none of them were achieved. The UN's criteria included pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030, $100 billion in financial aid from rich nations to poor, and ensuring that half of that money went to helping the developing world adapt to the worst effects of climate change.

"We did not achieve these goals at this conference," Guterres said. "But we have some building blocks for progress."

Swiss Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the change will make it harder to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times - the more stringent threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

US climate envoy John Kerry said governments had no choice but to accept India's coal language change: If we hadn't done that we wouldn't have had an agreement. But he insisted the deal was good news for the world.

"We are in fact closer than we have ever been before to avoiding climate chaos and securing cleaning air, safer water and healthier planet," he said later at a news conference.

India's Environment and Climate Minister, Bhupender Yadav, said the revision reflected the "national circumstances of emerging economies."

"We are becoming the voice of the developing countries," he told Reuters, saying the pact had "singled out" coal but kept quiet about oil and natural gas.

"We made our effort to make a consensus that is reasonable for developing countries and reasonable for climate justice," he said, alluding to the fact that rich nations historically have emitted the largest share of greenhouse gases. Yadav also blamed unsustainable lifestyles and wasteful consumption patterns in rich countries for causing global warming.

The single-word change was met with dismay by both rich countries in Europe and small island nations along with others still developing.

"We believe we have been side-lined in a non-transparent and non-inclusive process," Mexico's envoy Camila Isabel Zepeda Lizama said. "We all have remaining concerns but were told we could not reopen the text … while others can still ask to water down their promises." But Mexico and others said they would let the revised agreement stand.

Many other nations and climate campaigners criticised India for making demands that weakened the final agreement.

"India's last-minute change to the language to phase down but not phase out coal is quite shocking," said Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, who tracks world emission pledges for the science-based Climate Action Tracker. "India has long been a blocker on climate action, but I have never seen it done so publicly."

Others approached the deal from a more positive perspective. In addition to the revised coal language, the Glasgow Climate Pact included enough financial incentives to almost satisfy poorer nations and solved a long-standing problem to pave the way for carbon trading.

The agreement also says big carbon polluting nations have to come back and submit stronger emission cutting pledges by the end of 2022.

Negotiators said the deal preserved, albeit barely, the overarching goal of limiting Earth's warming by the end of the century to 1.5 degrees. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times.

Governments used the word progress more than 20 times on Saturday, but rarely used the word success and then mostly in that they've reached a conclusion, not about the details in the agreement.

Conference President Alok Sharma said the deal drives progress on coal, cars, cash and trees'' and is something meaningful for our people and our planet.''

Environmental activists were measured in their not-quite-glowing assessments, issued before India's last minute change.

"It's meek, it's weak and the 1.5 C goal is only just alive, but a signal has been sent that the era of coal is ending. And that matters," said Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan, a veteran of the U.N. climate talks known as the Conferences of Parties.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson, speaking for a group of retired leaders called The Elders, said the pact represents : the pact represents some progress, but nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster....People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty.

After Yadav first raised the spectre of changing the coal language, a frustrated European Union Vice President Frans Timmermans, the 27-nation EU's climate envoy, begged negotiators to be united for future generations.

"For heaven's sake, don't kill this moment," Timmermans pleaded. "Please embrace this text so that we bring hope to the hearts of our children and grandchildren."

Helen Mountford, vice president of the World Resources Institute think tank, said India's demand may not matter as much as feared because the economics of cheaper, renewable fuel is making coal increasingly obsolete.

"Coal is dead. Coal is being phased out," Mountford said. "It's a shame that they watered it down.''

Kerry and several other negotiators said that good compromises leave everyone slightly unsatisfied and that countries had more work ahead of them over the coming years.

"Paris built the arena and Glasgow starts the race," the veteran US diplomat said. "And tonight the starting gun was fired."

Chinese negotiator Zhao Yingmin echoed that sentiment.

"I think our biggest success is to finalise the rulebook," Zhao told the Associated Press. "Now we can start implementing it and delivering it on our achieved consensus."

Among those highlighting the cost of failure was Aminath Shauna, the Maldives' Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Technology.

Shauna pointed out that to stay within the warming limit nations agreed in Paris, the world must cut carbon dioxide emissions essentially in half in 98 months a formidable task. "The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us," she said.

Egypt's Environment Minister Yassmin Fouad Abdelaziz said next year's talks to be held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh would focus on aid and compensation for poor countries.

As negotiators left the final session after congratulating themselves, they passed a young lone protester who sat silently with red blood-like writing on crossed arms that said: "We are watching."

(With inputs from Reuters, AP, and PTI)