UN climate action

: why are COPs failing to deliver : from COP 26 towards an ecocentric future

Abstract

The need for reconciliation between human beings and nature has been identified by the Secretary General of the United Nations as the great challenge of the 21st century (Guterres, 2020f, para. 1). This dissertation focuses on the most recent moment of climate negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 26th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change in Glasgow (COP 26). An attempt is made to understand why 26 COPs have not led to a decrease in global greenhouse gas emissions. This dissertation opens with a brief contextualisation of some of the most impactful documents in the debate on sustainability and climate action. The historical contextualization is useful to understand the foundations that characterize climate negotiations within the UNFCCC. The assessment of the Glasgow Climate Pact (Conference of Parties 26, 2021) leads to the identification of the most recent advances in the area of climate action, particularly as it was the first final document generated by a COP that refers to the need to phase down coal and abandon subsidies to fossil fuels. However, the analysis of COP 26 would not be fruitful without the analysis of the voices that criticised it the most and whose inputs diagnose its main weaknesses: institutional inertia, fossil fuel lobbies and the subscription to the idea of green growth. A prescriptive closing chapter seeks to present an epistemological alternative to the weaknesses of the UNFCCC. From an anthropocentric approach to climate action, a transition to an ecocentric approach, founded on Arne Naess' Deep Ecology (Naess, 2008) theory, is proposed. It is suggested that building climate negotiating institutions capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century and the needs of future generations is only possible through an ecocentric education.

Date of Award	9 Nov 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Nuno Sampaio (Supervisor)