“The prohibition of any exploitation of the deep seabed”. This is what President Emmanuel Macron pleaded on Monday, November 7 at the opening of COP27 in Egypt. “The oceans must be what space was, basically, a few years ago: it’s a new frontier for cooperation and multilateralism,” he said from the podium of the summit. the UN for the climate, in Sharm el-Sheikh.
France, “meeting its commitments”, “supports the prohibition of any exploitation of the deep seabed”, he added. “I assume this position, and will take it to international forums.”
Last June, the French Head of State had already defended, during the United Nations conference for the oceans, the development of a “legal framework to put a stop to the mining of seabeds in high seas and not allow new activities that would endanger ocean ecosystems”.
French deputies of all persuasions and associations demanded at the end of October that France reflect this desire by committing to a moratorium of at least ten years on the mining of the seabed. The elected environmentalist Nicolas Thierry tabled this Monday in the National Assembly a resolution to this effect co-signed by 168 deputies. They are calling for such a moratorium within the International Seabed Authority (AIFM), which meets until November 11 in Jamaica.
A “special status” for ecosystems
Emmanuel Macron also promised the establishment of a “positive preservation program” to protect “critical ecosystems, ancient forests, peat bogs, mangroves or wetlands”. “If these ecosystems are destroyed, vast stores of carbon will be released, destroying any chance of achieving our goals,” he warned. “We must therefore urgently recognize a special status for these ecosystems and offer the States that shelter them political and financial contracts to help them preserve them,” he said.
He specified that Gabon, Colombia or the Philippines had already “joined” this approach during a meeting on Monday at COP27. “We will meet in Libreville in early 2023 to adopt very concrete action plans during a One Forest Summit” co-organized with his Gabonese counterpart Ali Bongo, added the French president.
The French head of state also defended financial solidarity with the poorest countries exposed to the devastating effects of global warming, but asked “a group of high-level wise men” for proposals by spring to reform the system. international finance.
“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish”
Inaction in the face of the accelerating climate crisis is akin to “collective suicide”, for his part launched this Monday the head of the UN at COP27, urging them to strengthen the fight before it be too late. “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It’s either a climate solidarity pact or a collective suicide pact”, thundered Antonio Guterres in front of nearly 100 heads of state and government.
Because faced with the emergency, it is a question of putting the maximum pressure on the countries so that they strengthen the fight against global warming, despite the “polycrisis” which monopolizes their attention: war in Ukraine, energy and food crises, return of inflation, imminent recession, etc. The climate is “the defining issue of our time”, and it would be “unacceptable, scandalous and self-destructive” to relegate it “to the background”, insisted Antonio Guterres.
“The world has become a land of suffering”, for his part launched the host of the summit, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, in reference to the multiplication of the catastrophic impacts of global warming: devastating floods, heat waves, droughts putting crops badly. “Isn’t it time to end it?”
But countries’ current commitments fall far short of the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, a cornerstone of climate diplomacy. Namely to contain global warming “significantly” below 2°C compared to the pre-industrial era, and if possible to 1.5°C. The latest “national contributions”, if for once fully respected, would at best leave the world on a trajectory of +2.4°C by the end of the century, according to the UN. And with the current policies, it is even a catastrophic +2.8°C that is looming.