Businesses and governments came together at the UN climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco, to launch a platform to push for climate strategies to 2050.
The initiative was spearheaded by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Twenty-two countries, including the UK, 15 cities, 17 regions and 196 firms in the We Mean Business network, have backed the 2050 pathways platform. It aims to support countries to devise long-term climate plans to back up the domestic commitments required by the Paris agreement. Finance and training will be provided, and it would be a ‘space for collective problem solving’, the UNFCCC said.
Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders’ Group published a report outlining what business-friendly long-term plans could look like. Eliot Whittington, deputy director of the group, said 2050 national plans should be flexible enough to support and respond to innovation without trying to predict the future, and must be accompanied by broad political support and transparent processes.
Jonathan Grant, director of climate change at consultancy PwC, said 2050 goals were essential. ‘But they’re no substitute for near-term signals to businesses for investments they need to make today. The Paris agreement on its own is not strong enough to support investment – that will need to come from measures such as tax policies and carbon taxes.’
The election of Donald Trump as the next US president cast a shadow over the talks, but countries including the UK and Australia ratified the agreement in spite of fears that the US would pull out. More than 190 countries reaffirmed their commitment to ‘full implementation’ of the global climate deal through the Marrakech Action Proclamation. They agreed to finalise the rule book for implementation by 2018.