Chronicle Editor
Gibson Nyikadzino, Zimpapers Politics Hub
IN view of scientific evidence that has been presented by experts on the damage that is occurring on the environment, it seems that solving environmental problems requires something more than science.
Science is important because it helps people create different kinds of gadgets, new devices and technologies that would enable communities to achieve a more low-impact lifestyle. However, implementing scientific solutions now goes beyond what scientists would look for. Politics is now stepping in the field of science.
The world is not short of engineering solutions. What the world is short of is the commitment to solve environmental problems because there is no agreement on the nature of environmental problems. Governments cannot agree on which problem should be solved first, who should shoulder the responsibility and pay the cost.
To highlight how important and serious climate change is, one has to realise that the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the BRICS+ coalition, the Organisation of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) are talking about it.
Developed nations pledged in 2009 to send US$100 billion annually to developing countries struggling with the consequences of more severe climate change-driven disasters by 2020
The developing world is facing the disheartening fact that, despite years of promises of climate assistance, funds are still not arriving quickly enough to meet the growing challenges posed by climate change.
Last week, at the COP29 meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh’s leader Muhammad Yunus slammed rich countries responsible for decades of carbon emissions for not being willing to pay their fair share. The focus at this year’s COP29 meeting was on setting new financial goals to help developing countries cope with the effects of climate change.
China and the United States, two of the largest economies in the world, have made promises that are yet to be firmly fulfilled.
Many nations are still years away from providing money or are years behind schedule because of political disputes, administrative bottlenecks and discussions about new regulations to speed up help from private donors and development banks.
Climate change and the environment are becoming issues highlighting at best the politics of representations. If there is a commitment to solve the environmental problems, it is important to have the concrete representation of the problem in order to measure the problems.
Thus, the failure to meet the commitments that were made 15 years ago in pursuit for sustainable economic growth, developed countries are being empirical that they are not committed to proposals to reduce gas emissions from their economic dependent industries.
These delays have had significant consequences on the development aspirations of growth, sustainable development, peace and security because of floods, droughts and high temperatures.
Ahead of the Baku meeting, an independent group of scientists monitoring climate change said there had been no progress on lowering the forecast for global warming for a third year in a row.
Climate change debates are scientific; however, the developing world appears to be discarding scientific findings in pursuit of national interests. It is like the story of colonisation, where colonial powers disregard the atrocities, which they committed for the sake of wanting to remain relevant.
Instead, dealing with climate change is becoming a political issue, which some regard as a “hoax” while others continue using fossil fuels to light up their industrial development capacity. As a result, the plight of developing nations in Africa, which only annually have less than five percent of carbon emissions in the atmosphere, becomes worse each time issues of concern are not addressed.
One of the reasons there is a dragging of dealing with the issues is that there is no consensus on how the world should move forward. It therefore calls for a better understanding about where nations, private donors, multinational corporations and people disagree with each other.
Climate change and environmental problems are after all problems related to mankind because humans are the troublemakers. If people cannot come up with a consensus among themselves, it will be difficult for the environment to be improved even with brilliant technical solutions available.
At the same time, without understanding how serious the problem the world is facing is, without understanding how much damage is being done to the environment, there is no motivation to make changes and reduce the carbon footprint.
Climate change is a proper global problem. No country, political or economic sector is going to be left unaffected by the impacts of climate change. It is particularly useful for people, developed and developing nations and inter-governmental and multilateral institutions to unlock the current political complexity surrounding decision-making on climate change responses. The first complexity is the politics of scale.
Decision-making is not made at any one particular scale. It is made at multiple scales. It is key to have a common agenda and deal with climate change, whether states agree on set compulsory targets for carbon emission reductions or not.
Online Reporter