The UK is poised to miss a UN deadline to set out a plan to tackle the climate emergency, in the latest blow to Boris Johnson’s claim to be leading the world.
All nations are expected to announce tougher “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) by the end of this year – but Alok Sharma, the business secretary, repeatedly refused to make the commitment.
Instead, he told MPs that the UK would be “seeing what we can do” and would “try and put our best foot forward on this”.
The likely delay comes after the government was castigated for lacking an action plan to meet the legal duty to cut carbon emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2050.
It is also potentially embarrassing for the UK, which will host the crucial Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow next year after it was delayed 12 months by the pandemic.
The NDCs are seen as vital if the world is to meet the Paris Agreement goal of averting climate catastrophe, by holding the global temperature rise “well below 2C”.
Governments are expected to explain how they will deliver deeper carbon cuts, to avoid Cop26 being a flop when it is eventually staged.
Last week, Patricia Espinosa, the UN’s climate chief, warned that only about 80 of the 197 signatories to the 2015 Agreement are likely to submit updated climate plans in 2020.
Asked if the UK would be among them, Mr Sharma told the Commons environmental audit committee he was “very well aware” that the UK needed to act when it was “calling for others to be ambitious”.
“We will also be seeing what we can do,” he said, adding: “We want to try and put our best foot forward on this.”
But he then signalled the deadline would be missed, telling the MPs: “There are a range of countries, which, because of the pandemic, that may well come later than the end of this year.”
Later, Mr Sharma, would not commit to whether the UK would include emissions from aviation and shipping in its next climate budget, the programme for cuts.
And he was unable to say when a peat strategy – which was “two years late”, Green MP Caroline Lucas protested – would be published.
This week, the Institute for Government think-tank warned there is no effective net zero plan because “leadership has been lacking” even with the clock ticking.
Ministers had “balked at measures that risk public opposition” and failed to escape from a “business as usual” approach.
There was criticism of the appointment of Mr Sharma to lead the Cop26 preparations, while juggling it with the business brief – even before coronavirus intervened.
The summit, billed by the UN as the “last chance’ to avert the climate emergency, will now be held in Glasgow next autumn, after a one-year delay.
