U.S. President Joe Biden announced that Global Methane Pledge, an initiative to reduce global methane emissions is set to be launched to reduce potent greenhouse gases worldwide.
He was addressing the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday.
"Together with the European Union, we are launching a Global Methane Pledge to collectively reduce methane emissions – one of the most potent greenhouse gases – by at least 30 per cent by the end of the decade,” he said.
More than 70 countries have already signed up to support the rapid reduction of methane pollution, he said adding: "I encourage every nation to sign on. It's the single most effective strategy we have to slow global warming in the near term.”
Methane, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, accounts for about a quarter of all the heat trapped in the atmosphere since the pre-industrial era.
Biden said that U.S is also going to cut greenhouse gas emissions by well over a gigaton by 2030.
"We’ll also deliver cleaner air and water for our children, electrifying fleets of school buses, increasing credits for electric vehicles, and addressing legacy pollution,” he said.
Biden also said that the autoworkers will also build the next generation of electric vehicles as electricians install a nationwide network of 500,000 vehicle stations adding U.S. will reduce emissions by 50 to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030.
"In the lead-up to this gathering, the United States joined our G7 partners to launch a Build Back Better World initiative. We also reconvened the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate to launch transformative actions and to raise ambition,” he said.
Quadrupling climate finance
Joe Biden, yesterday reiterated that his administration is working with the Congress to quadruple our climate finance support for developing countries by 2024, including a significant increase in support for adaptation efforts.
On his very first day in office, Biden took action to return the United States to the Paris Agreement.
"Since then, our administration has been hard at work unlocking clean energy breakthroughs to drive down the cost of technologies that will require us to do -- to achieve net-zero emissions,” he said.
Over the next several days, he said, the United States will be announcing several new initiatives that demonstrate its commitment to providing innovative solutions across multiple sectors, from agriculture to oil and gas, to combating deforestation, to tackling hard and to abate industries.
He also announced that, "up to $9bn (£6.6bn) of US funding through to 2030 will conserve and restore our forests and mobilise billions more from our partners".
Likely effects of climate finance failure
If climate financing mechanisms are not agreed upon, developing countries are left to rely on loans when faced with climate-related disasters, and this could hinder their sustainable development.
This is according to Faustin Munyazikwiye, the Deputy Director-General of Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) who is among government’s negotiators at conference.
Climate finance is one of the big battles of the COP26 climate summit.
"Climate finance is critical for our countries that are highly vulnerable to adapt to climate change-induced impacts such as floods, landslides, droughts and other and to build a climate-resilient community.
Without climate finance developing countries are left to rely on loans when faced with climate-related disasters, and this hinders their sustainable development,” he said.
Developing countries heavily rely on the $100 billion commitment to reach their goal and Munyazikwiye said that failure to provide the annual $100 billion finance by developed nations will lead to the un-fulfillment of developing countries’ climate pledges which are conditional to the availability of climate finance.
He explained that if carbon market mechanisms are not agreed upon, it will compromise the achievement of the goal of Paris Agreement.
"Carbon market helps countries that exceed their emissions reduction targets to sell their excess reductions as credits to other countries who have failed to meet the targets they pledged to reduce. In this context, the carbon market helps to raise climate ambition as it helps countries to reduce emissions and facilitate financial flows to developing countries,” he said.
We are running out of time, and we are in need of a decision on the operationalization of market mechanisms under the Paris Agreement, he added.
Speaking about the "loss and damage debate” where developed countries must compensate for damages caused by climate change in poor countries by 2025, he said failure to do this, will worsen the situation leading to great losses in developing countries’ GDP.
He said this is based on the fact that developing countries are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Climate change is particularly challenging for these countries which experience losses and damage that occur both from changes in the frequency, intensity, and geographical distribution of weather events such as storms, floods, strong winds and slow-onset phenomena.
If loss and damage is not given the importance it deserves, least developed countries and small island states will keep losing hard-fought gains to achieve their sustainable development which undermine their efforts to build resilience,” he noted.