Image copyright NASA Image caption Matteo Renzi, the former prime minister of Italy, presented the report
The Group of 20 needs to give the planned G20 summit in Argentina a significant push, not in terms of rhetoric, but in terms of action.
That is the view of former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, who was speaking to the BBC’s Planet Money programme.
Mr Renzi suggested that if there is one, there will be a victory to emerge from COP26, and that it would be about innovation to mitigate carbon emissions.
COP26 is a key UN meeting of national leaders in Bonn, aimed at adopting new rules for the Paris climate accord.
It will then head to a meeting of COP24 in Poland, and the following year there will be another meeting at COP24 in Chile.
This will all culminate in COP25 in Katowice, Poland, at the end of November 2019.
That is exactly six months away.
For this latest summit to have any chance of succeeding, perhaps action-lovers would do well to think of a new phrase.
Action-not-to-talk has some historic precedent.
In 2015 at COP21 in Paris, when we had a historic level of agreement, instead of congratulating one another for crossing a potential Rubicon, leaders went home to identify the factors that would be necessary to get the world where we needed to be.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Brazil’s President Michel Temer announces the end of the Paris Climate Accord at COP21 in Paris, on December 12, 2015
That gave momentum to a process that now feels like an endless saga, at times a real slog.
Rather than in summary format in an open meeting, COP19, COP22, COP23 and COP24 were closed meetings.
A new vision was to be declared. But there has been no such declaration. Indeed, over half of the 165 parties involved, have fallen into the world’s biggest problem of failure.
The question remains. At the end of this frustrating process will we finally have a new game plan? Will the ambition of the Paris accord be confirmed and with a like or on track to be verified? Will countries start to set aside political differences in the interest of avoiding the climate catastrophe that we are all here to avoid?
This two-day session in Bonn brought together governments from all over the world to reach broad agreement.
But at the same time there is a clear indication from some at COP24 that the likes of Mr Macron have fallen short. The US, Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, in the last round of negotiations, appeared to be wavering.
On top of that is the latest revelation that Canada intends to stay out of a planned Montreal protocol.
For the agreement to succeed at the end of 2019, the backers of the Paris agreement will have to wake up, even if it means the sleep of our generation may be gone.
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