Will Saudi Arabia derail G20 climate-led recovery?
A pandemic recovery plan to be thrashed out at this weekend’s G20 summit is to have strong climate conditions, even with ‘climate villain’ Saudi Arabia at the helm.
Saudi Arabia’s state-owned petroleum giant, Saudi Aramco, has emitted significantly more CO2 than any other major fossil fuel company on earth over the last half century. Emissions have slowed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but Saudi Arabia’s extremely weak CO2 reduction targets and rallying of resistance to climate action has made it a pariah in global efforts to decarbonize and fight global heating.
As Saudi Arabia hosts the virtual G20 Leaders’ Summit on November 21-22, it will help shape a $5 trillion pandemic response stimulus package that is to include clear climate mitigation measures.
The G20 chair has indeed been talking up climate and sustainability in the run-up to the summit as crude demand and prices fall drastically in the wake of the pandemic — Saudi oil revenues dropped 45% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020.
“The Saudi Presidency plays a leading role in advancing strategic plans to tackle climate change,” read a Tuesday statement in support of the G20’s “Safeguarding the planet” slogan. It added: “As a global energy producer, it seeks to find a solution through innovation and collaboration with G20 members to create a sustainable framework for growth during and after the pandemic.”
But actions have failed to live up to the rhetoric. The world’s largest oil exporter has reportedly censored discussion around fossil fuel subsidy removal that the G20 plans to implement by 2025.
It has instead pivoted to a “carbon circular economy” model that looks for ways to capture and reuse CO2 and avoid “the need to phase out oil,” said Joanna Depledge, the editor of Climate Policy, a UK peer-reviewed journal covering climate change policy, and an expert on Saudi climate politics.
Moreover, Saudi Arabia’s own pandemic recovery plan aims to bail out an oil industry that brings in over 60% of government revenues, and does not mention climate or “green measures.”
Climate sidelined from COVID recovery plans
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only G20 nation that has given unequivocal support to fossil fuel industries in the wake of the pandemic without attaching climate conditions.
According to the 2020 Climate Transparency Report, an annual collaboration between 14 think tanks and NGOs across G20 countries, only four G20 countries including France and Germany funded green sectors to a greater extent than fossil fuel and emissions-intensive industries.
Though the EU has promised to commit 30% of its recovery package to tackling climate mitigation, the 19 G20 nations have financially supported domestic oil, coal and gas sectors without demanding climate commitments in exchange. This risks cancelling out the 0.1% drop in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019, which was achieved through climate policies after a near 2% increase in 2018.
In this context, “it’s not terribly unexpected that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have much in the way of climate recovery,” said Mia Moisio of the New Climate Institute, a Germany-based climate change think tank. Read More…
Source : dw
