Extract from ABC News
A year ago, the world's eyes were focused on Glasgow, Scotland, for what had been billed as the "last best chance" to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius: the UN climate change conference, COP26.
The UN climate conference — or COP — is the biggest UN conference held outside its New York headquarters, and the primary way countries progress coordinated global action on climate change.
Ahead of the meeting, there were months of high-profile discussions between the most powerful leaders in the world including then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden.
This year, despite the climate crisis continuing unabated, things are a bit more subdued.
Representatives from nearly every country in the world have this time gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, but among them are fewer world leaders. And they will be bringing to the table fewer big new promises.
Let's take a look at what we will see at this year's COP and why it's different.
Ambition versus implementation
While last year's COP was about setting high ambitions for action on climate change, this year's COP is more focused on implementing those ambitions. Egypt has even used the tag-line "Together For Implementation" for the conference.
"It can't always be about announcements," said Linh Do, an expert in climate leadership from the University of Melbourne.
"It also has to be about the work that happens and about the policy detail."
She said this COP will focus on "the details and the nuts and bolts of how we will actually implement all of these plans".
Richie Merzian, a former Australian government climate negotiator, now at the Australia Institute, said that means figuring out how to measure countries' progress and how to pay for the changes required.
He warned there might be some disappointing outcomes.
"Often after a big, high profile leader-level meeting, you have a bit of backsliding — a bit of buyer's remorse, when people take that high level ambition and try and implement it and see how difficult it can be," Mr Merzian said.
Global crises lowering expectations
That buyer's remorse might be exacerbated by the new context countries find themselves in now.
"I think a lot of people thought that we were in the post-COVID era, but actually there's been a lot of other crises that the world has had to face and endure," Ms Do said.
Some of those crises are climate-related — like the devastating floods in India — but because they require immediate recovery work, the broader discussion on climate change has taken a back seat, said Ms Do.
A war in Europe, a global energy crisis and rising tensions between the world's two biggest emitters — China and the US — means making progress could be hard.
US-China tension has made cooperative leadership from the world's two biggest emitters challenging, and the war in Ukraine and energy crisis has left the climate crisis as a less urgent concern for some leaders, according to Ms Do.
"So at this COP, if we can just save what was agreed last year and tease out a bit more of the detail, that would really be a success," Mr Merzian said.
Paying for the transition
The host country, Egypt, negotiates at COPs in a bloc alongside other African countries — and those countries have a strong focus on what's called "climate finance": finding the money for developing world to make the required transition away from fossil fuels.
"[Egypt] wants to make sure that there's sufficient financial support to help African countries switch to renewable energy and also to actually deal with these unavoidable impacts — the floods, the droughts, the fires, the sea level rise," Mr Merzian said.
Key to that will be developing a new target for how much money should be provided by the developed world.
At the moment, developed countries have committed to providing $US100 billion (more than $150 billion) every year between 2020 and 2025.
Now a new — and bigger — target will be sought for the following years.
"You're going to see more pressure to provide more resources for these countries to deal with the impacts and to help with their transition," Mr Merzian said.
A brand new Australia
But in the midst of lowered expectations, Australia comes to the conference with a new government, more ambitious emissions targets, and a stronger focus on transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
And on top of that, Labor has committed to bidding to host a COP in Australia — something Mr Merzian said is roughly the same size as a Commonwealth games.
"In order to secure that, Australia needs to have the support of other Western countries … and it wants to host in partnership with the Pacific," he said.
Mr Merzian said Australia was improving its reputation on the world stage, but that it might need to do more to win support to host a COP.
Australia has now signed up to a global methane pledge to cut methane — a potent short-acting greenhouse gas — by 30 per cent, which the previous government refused to.
Mr Merzian said Australia's reputation as a blocker of international movement on climate action would be reversed — and Australia was likely to try to be a helpful "honest broker" at the negotiations.
But he said countries we cooperate with — particularly in the Pacific — want to see Australia move away from coal and gas "and certainly stop new coal and gas projects".
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