Summary Reader Response Final (Revised) : Five years since Paris Agreement, world must get ambitious on climate action

  In the recent news release, “Five years since Paris Agreement, world must get ambitious on climate action”, Sharma (2020) addressed the world’s efforts to combat climate change by holding a global Climate Ambition Summit to discuss strategies for carbon neutrality. During the summit, 45 nationally determined contributions (NDC) and 24 net-zero commitments were announced by leaders worldwide to reduce the impacts of climate change. Sharma stated that the British government has withdrew its monetary support for the fossil fuel energy sector overseas. Additionally, he mentioned the United Kingdom’s (UK) and Singapore’s government exchange on educating each other regarding grid decarbonisation. He claimed that Singapore plays a vital role in supporting regional energy transitions, keen on imparting its knowledge for a sustainable planet. Thus, he believes that contribution is not an individual effort, and it is proven by the existing pandemic to work together and achieve success.

Sharma suggested that to combat climate change the world has to work hand in hand, forming partnerships to achieve success. I agree with Sharma that collaboration to share information,  technologies and resources between nations, organisations and people is essential to combat climate change. 

The lack of collaboration between countries may be the reason for the rapid decline of our climate. as developing countries have insufficient knowledge, resources and technologies to reduce such emissions to the planet. Without help from developed nations with their information,  technologies and resources, they are unable to combat emission effectively. According to Javadinejad et al (2019) "Poor developing countries release 63% of the global greenhouse gas emissions." this indicates that developing countries contribute to a huge percentage of greenhouse emission. Research has shown that one of the common problems in developing countries are the lack of funding for their adaptation plans (Javadinejad et al., 2019). so if the developing countries are able to acquire more monetary resource, knowledge and technology through collaboration with developed countries, they will be able to effectively combat climate change.

In light of climate change, the collaboration of nations to develop climate-friendly technology (CFT)  to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases is one of the main key notions. During 2015 Paris Climate Summit, 20 countries agreed to work together and share information on CFT research and development activities called Mission Innovation (Jiang et al., 2017). Through these activities, the countries with advanced knowledge on low-carbon science technology can connect with other countries to share their expertise for them to catch up. Furthermore, countries can exchange information on their finding in such technologies, educating each other on their mistakes and their successes, furthering each other’s comprehension of such technologies. For example, United State and India collaborating exchanging information on space cooling technologies and other energy conservation strategies (The White House, 2016). These collaborations will help boost the quantity and quality of CFT in the market which in return reducing the negative impact of climate change.

Lastly, we must not neglect how collaboration between the government and organisations will be able to push forward the world's climate agenda, as different sectors like the governments and multilateral institutions can set targets, frameworks and mandates for other parties to shift their demeanour and use their resources both efficiently and sustainably (Kim, 2020). According to Kim, President of Hanwha Solutions, the “Clean Up Mekong” campaign in Vietnam was a partnership between a local government and conglomerate company from Korea. They were able to boost garbage collections effort in Mekong River using solar power to supply energy to the trash-collection boats, for which diesel engines are usually used. The problem of using these diesel-powered boats is that they leak fuel and release excessive greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere causing all clean-up effort to be counterproductive (Kim, 2020). These show how collaboration between the government and organisations can help combat climate change.

The collaboration between nations, organisations and people to share information and technologies are essential to combat climate change. By collaborating they can support each other when the other is lacking resources, or collaborate to develop new and innovative ways to negate the negative impact of climate change.

 

References

 

The White House, (2016), The United States and India – Moving Forward Together on Climate Change, Clean Energy, Energy Security, and the Environment. (2016). https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/07/fact-sheet-united-states-and-india-–-moving-forward-together-climate

Javadinejad, S., Dara, R., & Jafary, F. (2019). Taking Urgent Actions to Combat Climate Change Impacts. 2, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.10315508

Jiang, J., Wang, W., Wang, C., & Liu, Y. (2017). Combating climate change calls for a global technological cooperation system built on the concept of ecological civilization. Chinese Journal of Population Resources and Environment, 15(1), 21–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10042857.2017.1286145

Kim, D. K. (2020). How cross-sector collaboration is driving the global climate agenda. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/how-cross-sector-collaboration-is-driving-the-global-climate-agenda/

Sharma, A. (2020, December 20). Commentary: Five years since Paris Agreement, world must get ambitious on climate action. CNA. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/un-cop26-climate-change-commitment-net-zero-clean-energy-uk-13798700

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