“Is the Paris Agreement honeymoon well and truly over?”
OPINION
a single pioneering shoot catches my eye as it creeps up my neighbour’s otherwise bare and neatly painted fence. Hated by many and overlooked by most, this is common ivy with nowhere to hide. If you stare at it long enough, the repeating pattern of the leaves, branching left then right then left again, is quite mesmerising ( just don’t let the neighbours see you).
Meanwhile and far away, the next UN Climate Change Conference (running from 30th November to 12th December) is about to go ahead. While this issue of BBC Wildlife is on sale, COP28 will be undertaking the first “global stocktake” of how member states are measuring up to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the historic pledge to keep mean global temperatures to 1.5°C of warming, and not exceed 2°C. Reading more like a romantic milestone, the conference headline announces that “it has been seven years since Paris” and with just seven years left to achieve its targets, is the honeymoon well and truly over?
COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber certainly thinks so. “We don’t need to wait for the stocktake to know what it will say,” he concluded at an address earlier this year. “We are way off track. The world is playing catch-up when it comes to the key Paris goal of holding temperatures down to 1.5°C and the hard reality is that to achieve this goal, global emissions must fall 43 per cent by 2030. To add to the challenge, we must decrease emissions at a time of continued economic uncertainty, heightened geopolitical tensions and increasing pressure on energy security.”
The ivy trundles on, making slow, steady progress across the expanse that is my neighbour’s fence. This root-climbing plant does exactly what it says on the tin: highly specialised adventitious roots, splayed like tiny fingers clinging on for dear life, allow the plant to pull itself up bark, rock or mortar without wrapping itself around or penetrating the structure. First, the roots mould themselves to micro-features on the climbing surface before secreting a glue. Then, the root hairs desiccate, causing them to coil and ‘scrunch’ around the anchor points, producing a lasting and energy-efficient hold.
That, however, is where the support from the structure ends. Unlike parasitic plants, such as festive mistletoe, common ivy is self-sustaining, drawing its own water and nutrition, and only causing dif
