Britain will host the next United Nations’ climate conference, called COP26, in November in Glasgow, Scotland. It aims to spur more ambitious commitments by countries to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and keep the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, which was agreed under the Paris Agreement in 2015.

COP26 was postponed last year due to the coronavirus crisis. This year will mark the first time nations will review their climate targets and try to strengthen them.

But current countries’ plans put the world on track for a 2.4 C average temperature rise by the end of the century, according to analysis by Climate Action Tracker.

“Collectively, we are only 12 to 14 per cent of the way towards the 1.5 C goal by 2030,” based on countries’ current emissions targets, Peter Betts, associate fellow at Chatham House and former UK and EU lead climate negotiator, told the annual Chatham House climate conference.

“We need to take stock in Glasgow on how we are going to ramp up political ambition over the next few years,” he added.

Nick Bridge, the UK government’s special representative for climate change, said the country is pushing hard for all nations to come forward by next month with more ambitious commitments.

“We will not be able to solve the whole thing in Glasgow but we need to take concrete and convincing action collectively,” he added.

Developed countries also agreed in 2009 to together contribute $100 billion each year by 2020 in climate finance to poorer countries, many of whom are grappling with rising sea levels, storms and droughts made worse by climate change.

That target has not been met and must be delivered, negotiators for the least developed countries said.

Earlier this month, G7 leaders promised to raise their contributions to meet that goal but only two nations — Canada and Germany — offered firm promises of more cash.

More finance is needed from the United States which is starting from a low base and also from Italy which has not made a commitment towards the $100 billion, Betts said.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement and refused to deliver two-thirds of a $3-billion pledge made by his predecessor Barack Obama but green groups have called on current President Joe Biden to commit at least US$8 billion.

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Although the report stopped short of explicitly advocating going meat-free, it called for big changes to farming and eating habits to limit the impact of population growth and changing consumption patterns on stretched land and water resources.

Plant-based foods and sustainable animal-sourced food could free up several million square kilometres of land by 2050 and cut 0.7 to eight gigatonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said.

“There are certain kinds of diets that have a lower carbon footprint and put less pressure on land,” Jim Skea, professor at London’s Imperial College, said on Thursday.

The IPCC met this week in Geneva to finalize its report which should help to guide governments meeting this year in Chile on ways to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“The IPCC does not recommend people’s diets… Dietary choices are very often shaped or influenced by local production practices and cultural habits,” Skea, who is one of the report’s authors, told reporters in Geneva.

Land can be both a source and sink of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, and better land management can help to tackle climate change, the IPCC said.

But it is not the only solution and cutting emissions from all sectors is essential to quickly curtail global warming.

“The window for making these changes is closing fast. If there is further delay in reducing emissions, we will miss the opportunity to successfully manage the climate change transition in the land sector,” it said.

Since the pre-industrial era, land surface air temperature has risen by 1.53 C, twice as much as the global average temperature (0.87 C), causing more heatwaves, droughts and heavy rain, as well as land degradation and desertification.

Human use directly affects more than 70 per cent of the global, ice-free land surface and agriculture accounts for 70 per cent of freshwater use, the IPCC added in the report.

Agriculture, forestry and other land use activities accounted for 23 per cent of total net man-made greenhouse gas emissions during 2007-2016. When pre- and post-production activity in the food system are included, that rises to up to 37 per cent.

Last year the IPCC’s first special report warned that keeping the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5 C, rather than the 2 C target agreed under the Paris accord, required rapid change across society.

Food security

The IPCC warned of more disruption to global food chains as extreme weather becomes more frequent due to climate change and said environmental costs should be factored into food.

It projects a median increase of 7.6 per cent in cereal prices by 2050, meaning higher food prices and an increased risk of hunger.

While an estimated 821 million people are undernourished, changing consumption habits have already contributed to about two billion adults being overweight or obese.

Per capita supply of vegetable oils and meat has more than doubled based on data since 1961 but 25-30 per cent of total food produced is still lost or wasted.

Yields of crops such as maize and wheat have declined in some regions, while those of maize, wheat and sugar beets have increased in others in recent decades.

Forest factor

While forests can soak up heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere, desertification and deforestation can amplify warming due to the loss of vegetation cover and soil erosion.

Measures to cut emissions, such as the production of biofuels and biochar — made from biomass — as well as planting trees, will also increase demand for land conversion.

Reducing deforestation and forest degradation could result in a reduction of 0.4-5.8 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent, the report said.

The Amazon, about 60 per cent of which lies in Brazil, is sometimes called the “lungs of the world” due to the amount of CO2 it can absorb but it was not directly mentioned in the IPCC’s summary for policymakers.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has supported opening up protected areas of the world’s largest tropical rainforest to facilitate agriculture and mining since taking office in January.

The report text is prepared by over 100 scientists but has to be approved by governments. In those discussions, Brazil and India were very active to protect their national agro-industrial interests, a source familiar with the talks said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nina Chestney in London and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Megan Rowling.

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Glencore, whose non-mining holdings include Canadian grain handler Viterra, has said coal is still an investment opportunity, forecasting global demand will grow by seven per cent by 2030, driven by emerging economies and industrial demand, and halting spending would halve seaborne supplies in 15 years’ time.

Glencore chairman Tony Hayward told a conference in London on Tuesday that, like oil companies, the group would get a return on its investment.

“The investment we put in the ground today will come out in 10 years. The same applies to the world’s oil and gas companies — their investments will come out in 20 years,” Hayward said.

Renewables won’t achieve cost parity with fossil fuels until 2051, he predicted.

Energy company officials attending the same conference, the Institute of Directors’ (IoD) annual convention, believe parity will come much earlier.

Wilfrid Petrie, U.K. and Ireland chief executive at French gas and power group Engie, said he thought it would be as early as in five years’ time, whereas David Brooks, managing director of supply at U.K. renewable energy supplier Good Energy, said it could happen by 2020, adding that wind was already at cost parity with fossil fuels.

Research by the International Energy Agency and other organizations has shown that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar can now produce electricity in some parts of the world at a price close to that generated by fossil fuels such as coal and gas.

Hayward, who is also chairman of oil explorer Genel Energy and a former boss of BP, said great technological strides would be needed for renewables to become overall as cost competitive as fossil fuels before mid-century.

“In 15 years’ time, if someone really does achieve a technological breakthrough akin to a mobile phone, an iPhone, that will change the energy picture going forward,” he said.

— Nina Chestney reports on European power, gas, coal and carbon markets and renewable energy for Reuters from London, England. Additional reporting for Reuters by Helen Reid.

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A spluttering world economy had sapped political interest in the billion-dollar shifts from fossil fuels that scientists say are needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but rhetoric is changing in 2014, one year before a deadline for a new UN climate deal.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry went furthest, calling climate change “perhaps the most fearsome weapon of mass destruction” and ridiculing those who doubt that climate change is man made.

Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a deal at a summit in Paris in December 2015 to combat rising global temperatures which a UN panel of scientists has predicted will cause increasing extreme weather and rising seas.

The deal would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was spurned by the United States and which did not impose limits on rapidly developing economies like India and China.

With wild weather hitting some of the most developed parts of the world, politicians in rich nations are once again under pressure to address the issue.

“Attention has been increasing… sadly because of the increase in the frequency and intensity of natural events and disasters,” UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres told Reuters.

“The scale and speed of action needs to improve,” she said, adding that disasters in the past two or three years including 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines had also focused minds.

U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande last week urged an “ambitious” climate deal in 2015, which would come into force from 2020.

Large parts of the United States and Canada suffered bone-numbing cold last month that some scientists say could be a paradoxical side-effect of disruptions to the jet stream linked to climate change. Britain has had the wettest December to January on record, with widespread floods.

From the Manitoba Co-operator website: Drought forces California farmers to idle cropland

British opposition leader Ed Miliband said Britain was “sleepwalking to a climate crisis.”

Last year was the warmest on record in Australia with heat waves, droughts and wildfires. Prime Minister Tony Abbott is skeptical of a link to man-made global warming.

“If you look at the records of Australian agriculture going back 150 years, there have always been good times and bad,” he told reporters during a tour of drought-stricken farming regions Feb. 16. “This is not a new thing in Australia.”

Last year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raised the probability that mankind was the main cause of global warming since the mid-20th century to at least 95 per cent from 90 per cent assessed in 2007.

Most nations have yet to say what curbs they will impose on carbon emissions in 2015, in a deal that could influence energy investments from coal to wind power.

“It’s very good that international leaders are increasingly recognizing the threat of climate change,” Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s climate commissioner, told Reuters.

“But leaders must walk the talk with concrete and forward-looking actions and pledges.”

The European Commission has proposed a 40 per cent cut in the bloc’s emissions by 2030 from 1990 levels, after a 20 per cent cut by 2020.

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“The text has to recognize the critical role of agriculture in both mitigation and adaptation,” Robert Watson told Reuters at a food security conference at London-based think-tank Chatham House.

Negotiators from 175 nations are in Barcelona for two days of informal talks to iron out a new climate change deal ahead of a United Nations summit in Copenhagen this December.

They are haggling over greenhouse gas reduction targets to 2020 and beyond and there are fears agriculture could be down-played in the negotiations.

To feed a world with nine billion people, world food production needs to rise by 70 per cent by 2050, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

Curbing emissions coming from that level of food production is vital. It is estimated that 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and agriculture.

“Even if you go to zero carbon in energy production and use you will still have a growing sector which is currently 30 per cent of global emissions,” Watson said.

Governments should also be looking at a number of ways to improve food security and cut emissions in the short term by using current technology.

Watson said increasing the use of biofuels, improving the understanding of second-and third-generation biofuels, trade reform, reducing waste and helping small-scale farmers in developing nations, as well as exploring the potential for genetically modified crops were all important.

Separately, Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute, said right now, food security was under threat from protectionism, rather than climate change.

“The situation is very volatile,” he said on the fringes of the conference, adding price spikes over the next three to four years were likely, particularly in the rice and wheat markets.

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