Climate diplomacy will continue to be a challenge in 2023

By Catherine Brahic: Environment editor, The Economist

RECENT MONTHS and years have been scarred by a series of extreme weather events on all continents, which have brought home the consequences of the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. More such events will occur in 2023. With average global temperatures now 1.1-1.3°C above pre-industrial levels, many floods, droughts, wildfires and heat-waves will be made worse or more likely (or both) by climate change.

But although climate change is steadily raising average temperatures, natural sources of climate variability are also superimposed on that trend. One of the most powerful is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which causes the climate around the tropics to oscillate between two states, known as El Niño and La Niña. Roughly speaking, El Niño causes more rainfall in the central and eastern Pacific and droughts in Australasia, while La Niña is associated with droughts in east Africa, and more rainfall in west Africa and South Asia.

Unusually, the current La Niña, which began in September 2020, in now in its third year—the first time this century that such a “triple dip” has occurred. Seasonal forecasts show a very strong likelihood that the rains will fail in east Africa towards the end of 2022, causing the drought and food scarcity in the region to deepen in 2023.

Whether and how ENSO cycles are affected by climate change is an area of active research, but what is clear is that the cycles sit on top of the overall warming trend, and that La Niña years tend to be slightly cooler than average. If the current cycle is succeeded in 2023 by a neutral period, global average temperatures are likely to rise slightly. If it is followed by an El Niño, which turns the thermostat up, then global average temperatures will be nudged closer to the totemic 1.5°C target of the un Paris agreement. That could lead to even more devastating extreme-weather events than those seen in recent years.

Curbing these devastating and costly events, and stabilising the climate by reducing global emissions, are the objectives of international climate negotiations, the latest round of which were held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022. The COP27 meeting came at a low point for climate diplomacy, at the end of a year overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and the related energy and food crises. Climate politics, which have often been treated somewhat separately from other geopolitical issues, were suddenly no longer isolated. Prioritising short-term energy security over longer-term emissions cuts has led to greater use of coal, for example.

“The war has exploded tensions that were pre-existing,” says Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation, a lobby group. She says the war has “deconstructed” previous agreements that had survived political and military spats between America and China, for instance, creating an unprecedented “political mess”.

The next round of talks, in November 2023, will take place in the United Arab Emirates. It is a controversial setting. The UAE’s climate envoy, Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, is a government minister who also heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the UAE’s state-owned oil producer. He has spoken publicly and privately about his belief that oil and gas will continue to play a role in a net-zero carbon economy, and that oil and gas companies must be “active partners” in the global energy transformation. Expect a big argument about whether he is right.

On the one hand, it seems likely that some fossil fuels will still be burned in mid-century, even if global net-zero is reached. Electrifying cars and trains will be relatively simple; decarbonising aviation and shipping will be harder. Using some fossil fuels, and balancing the resulting emissions with carbon capture elsewhere, may be the least bad option.

On the other hand, limiting warming to 1.5-2°C, as set out in the Paris agreement, will require a dramatic reduction in fossil-fuel use, so that oil and gas end up playing only a marginal role in the global energy sector. The International Energy Agency has called for no new fossil-fuel development in order to meet net-zero targets. The UAE’s climate summit will prompt a vigorous debate about the role of oil companies in the energy transition, and whether they really can be part of the solution, not just part of the problem.■

Catherine Brahic: Environment editor, The Economist

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2023 under the headline “More hot air”