Dr Edi ASSOUMOU | Researcher at the CMA Mines Paris – PSL
Dr. Aïda DIONGUE-NIANG | Vice-Chair of Working Group I at the IPCC, meteorologist and climatologist
Pr. Nadia MAÏZI | Director of TTI.5 and the CMA Mines Paris – PSL and Lead Author at the IPCC
Discussion: “The challenges of international negociations”
Access Dr Edi ASSOUMOU’s Presentation [FR]: https://the-transition-institute.minesparis.psl.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ASSOUMOU-Edi_2d-Forum-TTI.5-Afrique-Climat_29-mai-2024_TTI.5-1.pdf
International negotiations play a vital role in supporting Africa in facing climate and environmental challenges. For the continent, these negotiations are an opportunity to make its voice heard, claim compensations, and forge international partnerships to build a more resilient and equitable future for its populations.
On Wednesday, May 29, 2024, The Transition Institute 1.5 had the pleasure of organizing its second Forum in Paris around the theme: “African Perspectives on Climate Change.” This event took place at the Mines Paris – PSL School.
Dr. Edi Assoumou has been a researcher at the Center for Applied Mathematics (CMA) at Mines Paris – PSL in France since 2007. His research activities focus on the analysis of energy systems and the development and articulation of models with varied spatial and temporal resolutions. Edi has participated in several European and French projects where his research has covered areas such as sustainable transportation, urban energy systems, energy and lifestyles, electricity system transitions, flexibility in gas systems, and life cycle analysis. In particular, Edi is an experienced TIMES modeler and coordinates the development of the French TIMES model and its sectoral modules, as well as the EU electricity system model.
Senegalese meteorologist and climatologist, Dr. Aïda DIONGUE-NIANG became Vice-Chair of Working Group I of the IPCC in 2023. She is a Technical Advisor at ANACIM (National Agency for Civil Aviation and Meteorology of Senegal) and an Associate Researcher at the Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics and Ocean S. Fongang at Cheikh Anta Diop University. She is also a co-author of the 6th IPCC Report. Her areas of expertise include the study of climate variability and meteorological phenomena within the West African monsoon.
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The Transition Institute 1.5 : https://the-transition-institute.minesparis.psl.eu/en/news/forum-tti-5-2024-regards-africains-sur-le-changement-climatique/
Created in 2022, The Transition Institute 1.5 – 1.5 as an echo of the maximum temperature rise goal advocated by the IPCC – is an initiative launched by the Mines Paris – PSL school with the support of its Foundation. The Institute is led by Nadia Maïzi, Professor at Mines Paris – PSL, Director of the Center for Applied Mathematics, and co-author of the 6th IPCC report.
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a round table which will cover the same topic as which is international negotiations between Mrs Jong who took the floor earlier and yes who is who works who on transition research following this round table we will take questions from the public so do not hesitate to send them on WAP so that we can ask them to the Roundtable [Music] participants thank you very much a and Nadia to take part in this round table very last minute thank you on the matter of negotiations I would like to know Ida first of all how the ipcc takes part in these uh cops and what was your experience thank you n PCC was created in 1988 and its first report was published in 1990 and it’s that report that um uh pushed them to create the um framework Convention of the UN on climate change in 1992 so they invited Nations to prevent any dangerous human intervention on the environment with the cops that take place every year so the ICC gave the scientific basis for the creation of this framework convention and then these reports had an influence on major decisions and major agreements to reduce greenhouse gases so the Kyoto Protocol and then the second with a second report and then the Paris agreement with the report of the fourth and fifth cycles and then in the fifth cycle there was a formal dialogue structure between experts and decision Mak and then we see that more and more and I’ve seen one participating to the cop that um the ipcc has a part to play a important part to play in discussions and the ipcc is also invited to provide information for the upcoming negoti the part played by the ipcc is to provide relevant information to government and the for more convention for cops but these information are not uh prescriptions and more and more following the cop people would want them to provide information for the future cops for the second Global balance that will take place in 2028 if understood properly uh let me ask you if this trend of Interest towards the information provided by the apcc is increasing have you experienced that in the work of the abcc researchers there is something that has changed and maybe [Music] mentions maybe we shouldn’t be prescriptive but we know that um there are results that are going to matter in light of the decisions made so is this something that you have felt or experienced and that you can tell us about maybe normally experts you’ve been an experts as well when they commit to contribute to the ipcc report they have to do do it in a neutral and transparent way but there there is bias everyone is biased we need to be aware of these biases and and and correct them but what I’ve noticed more recently is that when there are panel meetings the convention invitations to provide before the second world assessment when we talk about the panel is the assembly with the countries so there are interests that are opposed between countries sometimes they don’t want reports to be published at the right time because it might be problematic for them because especially the third report based on mitigation it needed to be published before the global assessment so what is the part played by vice presidents and co-presidents technically they shouldn’t represent their countries but maybe it’s ambiguous so do they support this in in an equal manner far from the concerns of their countries if it’s um questions that depend on on vice presidents but we should be independent and not look at the well the world of The Well of our country but it is taken into account because there is a balance that is uh found between the parts played by presidents vice presidents co-presidents between the different regions of the planet so let’s continue with Ed ID maybe you can tell us uh give us a perspective of what you’ve seen in cops so I’ll give you the floor I’d like to thank the uh participants because they’ve made it a lot easier to summarize my point of view on cop and the African position uh they they were there first observers and they see that we went from a policy which was just checking the rather intuitive or lowlevel measures and now we are taking into account the technical and Industrial point of views and strategic point of views so they have different sources because it’s things that are quite well known so the position of Africa is clear and it’s been expressed before for cup 28 based on these six points the efforts of developed country are they are they credible so here we’re trying to carry out the exercise that was offered before if you were a representative of an African country you can choose which one do you think that the effort of the efforts of developed countries are credible so the import of adaptation losses damages all of these points have been mentioned today the graph that we see here also shows the evolution of um assessment so we had a historical cup with 85,000 participants and we can see that in the history in Nigeria had 60 Representatives so 60 representatives for a country of 400 million inhabitants so the question raises is what’s the representation of politicians do you trust your politicians are they the ones who are going to implement these policies um but I think it’s a good thing that the population of these cops changes and for instance at the last cup there were more than a thousand people from Nigeria than other African countries since this is a negotiation a question is what do we negotiate if we take the graph to the left this is 2022 and we suggest three different trajectories I had prepared a questionnaire online but this is the credibility of the goal as an African country we are at a time where everyone agrees and if we look at the graph right before they show the emissions of each of the blocks of the country and if you look at Africa you will see that it’s uh there it’s a difficult line to find so negotiate do you negotiate your own contribution we’ve seen all of the um funding necessary for Africa but if others could make that effort we could double the part of African emissions without changing dramatically the profile so if we spend weeks or years decades negotiating what is Africa negotiating are they negotiating their right to have less pollution or other countries so this is more about the credibility of states and the exchanges between different participants is an important point for me the second point is what’s the narrative because the graph that you see here we’ve seen it developing countries are not going to make it alone China Africa the whole of Asia is among the regions where we emit the most if we look at the accumulated emissions this is the old story where we look for Africa here so Africa has 1.5 billion people out of these 8 billion Europe us were at 1 billion and Asia were at 4.8 billion people so when you look at these curves you think are negotiating an objective which is credible and what’s the narrative and we have this feedback from African country which is very clear which is to say Africa is not the biggest emitter it wasn’t in the past nor historically and this needs to be taken into account in discussions which means that the focus of efforts should be on adaptation because Africa is the continent as was said earlier brilliantly that is bearing the brunt of climate change all of these curves are right but what do we do with these curves this can slow down negotiations so who do we turn to we can discuss who’s ride who best described the problem well it’s important to describe a problem from a mathematical point of view here we have the solar and wind curves the Practical question is who do we turn to for this development and today if you look at the share of Africa in the above if you are a representative of a country who would you turn to to massively develop solar energy we see this balance of powers here which is obvious the only ones who managed to produce solar energy in a disruptive way massively have been China and to a lesser extent the us because they were lagging behind in less than 10 years so in this balance we see that there’s an alliance game where we’re going to have negotiations not so much to reduce emissions but to build new renewable infrastructure and the agreement points to that we need to increase the amount of renewable infrastructures Europe needs resources and Africa has Industrial Development challenge as well should there be a real transfer of skills and who is willing to do so and who are the partners and today there’s more of a my impression is that there’s more of a um freedom of tone so African countries such as South Africa or others have no difficulty in turning toward China and that develops Technologies and offers solution and by the way our the main producers for Europe so we’ve talked about this there’s been a lot of protectionist policies in Europe in the US to relocalize the renewable energy production because it’s a strategic challenge for now it’s not been the case in Africa and it’s one of the challenges of these negotiations for Africa just an idea of the extent of of the need for funds I’ve asked a few of you during the break what has been the great success of the cup and it’s been the operationalization of this fund so it’s 700 million and you can look at the San offshore wind uh Fleet um Park which is two million EUR so it’s a great success but there’s still a long way to go and to be a little bit provocative all of the developed countries should give at least one uh Wind Farm such as that of San to be credible in the negotiations thank you so I’d like to get back to what fedel said this morning we cannot decarbonize without having decolonized so in a way how do you feel about this position of Africa that attends cops are they being aligned because we talk about Africa as if it was a given that everyone would agree on on opposition is it a part of the debate is it part of the context that you just described in terms of difficulties and challenges I think that there are questions that predate the matter of cops so the question of decolonization and development is far older than that of climate so there’s a convergence um we have to take action and the world has to turn to the continent that has the biggest impact is it taken into account in cops well objectively no but this question Power Balance we are in a society that still things in a technical manner how are we going to invest how are we going to make sure that we have the financial flows to develop 4 gwatt the best way to do that today is to use the resources in the countries that have the industry for that if we say how are we going to do to ensure that Africa builds at least 10% of its um future electric infrastructure locally we’re only talking about 10% so several G what so what’s the information what are the plans and what’s the development trajectory so I think it’s implicit in the head of negotiators African negotiators but it isn’t for the content of negotiations I don’t know if one of you has data on the number of African negotiators it was in one of your tables I think compared to the negotiators of other countries is it also a structural problem and the number of discussions and places where we have to be at the same time is it something that you would like to react to I’d like to react on the fact that African countries have to make an effort to attend negotiations based on scientific knowledge there are very few country that um make references to their scientists at the ipcc or other working on climate impact to have the right knowledge uh with the latest scientific conclusions when they are at the C but we’ve seen over the past few years that there’s been Improvement which is a good sign also the other question that we can ask ourselves with regards to the ipcc is ever since it’s existed there have been reports that’s for sure but why aren’t countries making moving in negotiations that’s a questions that keeps coming back up is what we’re doing useful there are negotiations from that Poli can make but if there was a world without cup or without ipcc what it would be like maybe we’re going in the right directions but we’re moving slowly but we need to continue that way and I encourage African countries to work with their count scien [Music] I’d like to get back to question that we’ve received regarding the position of scientists and the fact that a scientist a neutral one unbiased one is already a polit a political choice and is it a position that allows to um talk about climate Justice and be heard by African governments Maybe I don’t know what you mean by neutral but it’s for sure we need to be unbiased in in light of what science says in the conclusions scientist we belong to communities countries we are more sensitive to some questions such as ethics or or others or not but as a scientist I need to be unbiased when it comes to the results of science we shouldn’t try to change them and I think that with regards to oil exploitation we have problems as ipcc scientists and when we go back to our countries and we say that to limit the increase in temperatures we need to stop emissions and thus stop exploiting fossil fuels and as you said earlier Africa should focus on adaptation but we know that if we continue to use fossil fuels it will be harder to adapt so there’s a limit to adaptation and sometimes this narrative is not well seen by our politicians and uh so it’s difficult last question to Eddie we are asked if Africa hasn’t become a playground for Solutions based on nature nature based solutions for the strategies of Northern countries in their [Music] um contributions is this something that you see in your analyses the fact that you believe or not in these trajectories this is a slightly provocative question but it’s relevant I discussed this with a negotiator from Cameroon explaining that they were very tired in Copenhagen because there were not enough of them and they felt like they were being taken around from one topic to another Without Really seeing the big picture it’s a bit less the case now and during that discussion we thought that for now the cop is mainly a group therapy forum for developed countries it’s not that Africa is a Playfield but rather that it’s more of a discussion of this is the emissions this is not good Africa’s patient is the patient they have the patient talk and they’ve said this is bad there is still a Goodwill that is the positive aspect and if I’m saying this it’s because no side is naive in my understanding Africa is not a Playfield that does not understand the political subtility that some may have perceived but it’s always been a world development partner a a migration origin and it remains a very optimistic place for the world so when we talk about climate change and all the experience we’ve seen in Mali in terms of adaptation to me it’s very optimistic I see much more optimism in here than the end of thermal cars in Europe for example so Africa [Music] it’s not more of a play field than other countries thank you and we will conclude with those words thank you very much for your inputs in the round table thank you