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COP26, climate change and autocratic regimes – an uncomfortable mix

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As the great and the good descended on Glasgow for the just concluded COP26 climate conference you could have been forgiven for displaying a degree of cynicism.

Despite the tidal wave of commitments from Western governments and multinational companies aimed at tackling climate change, the elephant in the Blue Zone was the mounting carbon emissions of some of the largest global polluters, the autocratic behemoths of China and Russia. 

According to “Our World in Data”, China and Russia together constitute approximately 33% of global carbon dioxide emissions with China alone accounting for a startling 28% of the world’s share.

Without concrete and immediate action from by far the world’s largest emitter (China), the chances of keeping global temperature increases to below 2 degrees by 2050 look rather farfetched. To placate an ever increasing array of critics, last year President Xi Jinping pledged that China would hit peak emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. In addition, he guaranteed to cut carbon intensity by “at least 65%” from 2005 levels by 2030, from a previous goal of “up to 65%.” Promises of that ilk have also been made by China’s state-owned steel, coal and power companies at the behest of the regime.

As ever with political pronouncements from Beijing, the chasm between words and deeds is yawning. In 2003, China accounted for 22% of global carbon dioxide emissions but by 2020 this had increased dramatically to 31%. Its share of global coal consumption rose from 36% to 54% in the same timeframe. With the latest global energy crunch further complicating matters, Beijing is in fact ramping up its coal-fired capacity in flagrant disregard of the environment, its citizens and its hollow carbon reduction promises.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, China is tripling its capacity to make fuel out of coal, about the most carbon-intensive process anybody can imagine. It already has more than 1,000 gigawatts of coal power and has another 105 gigawatts in the pipeline. By comparison the UK’s entire electricity generational capacity is about 75 gigawatts.

China’s neighbour Russia is hardly faring any better. In a year that has seen record-breaking forest fires in Siberia, torrential flooding on the Black Sea and a searing heatwave in Moscow, questions are being asked in Russia about what President Putin and his government plan to do about the existential threat of climate change. 

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Over the past year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to develop a plan for Russia to lower its emissions below those of the European Union by 2050. In the Far East, the Pacific coast island of Sakhalin hopes to leverage its vast forests to become Russia’s first carbon neutral region. At every level of the Russian government, climate policy is the hot topic.

As in China, there is a need to look beyond the headlines to see if action matches the lofty rhetoric. Russia has committed to carbon neutrality by 2060 (a target in line with China, though ten years less ambitious than the EU and the UK), but a Russian net zero is likely to be shrouded in over-exaggeration about the amount of carbon absorbed by the country’s forests, rather than in meaningful reductions in emissions via the mass rollout and subsequent adoption of transformative technologies.

A recurring issue clouding any Russian decarbonisation efforts is the litany of what are seen as “environmental disasters” perpetrated by private businesses in the region, one example being Norilsk Nickel’s accidental leak of 21,000 tonnes of diesel into a Siberian river last May, for which oligarch Vladimir Potanin was forced to pay a record fine of $2bn, and noxious chemical leaks at the Togliattiazot ammonia plant in southern Russia under the ownership of Sergei Makhlai.

Neither Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin attended COP26 in a move that not only set a rather ominous tone for the conference but one that is widely seen as a blow to efforts to get world leaders to negotiate a new deal to stall rising global temperatures. It remains to be seen how seriously the two autocratic leaders will take their climate responsibilities but away from geopolitical calculations is a simple truth: China and Russia are vast countries that are warming faster than the planet at large. A succession of wildly volatile seasons and weather patterns, and their attendant natural catastrophes, have left the Russian and Chinese populations far more attuned to environmental issues. For leaders that like to stay on the right side of public opinion wherever possible, in the long run there may be little choice but for Xi and Putin to go fully green and perhaps even consider attending the successor events to COP26.

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