What is Cop26 and why is it important? Guide to Glasgow Climate Summit

The next UN climate conference, or Cop26, has been billed as a test of global solidarity between the world’s rich and poor and most importantly climate negotiations since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

After a year’s delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, heads of state, diplomats, business leaders, campaigners and journalists will meet in person in Glasgow, UK from 31 October to 12 November.

Host countries aim to strengthen climate action and maintain hopes of meeting the Paris Agreement’s tougher goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

This will help curb emissions deeper and faster, adapt to a new era of climate impacts, and scale up the financial support developing countries need to build low-carbon, resilient economies. I mean

Here’s what you need to know about meetings.

First. What is a police officer?

“Cop” stands for Conference of the Parties and refers to the meeting of the 197 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as the United Nations Climate Change.

Hosted by a different country each year, the conference brings together representatives of governments to advance global efforts to prevent dangerous climate change.

Cop1 was held in Berlin, Germany in 1995.^th The session of talks is known as Cop26.

Central to the Cop is the negotiation of legal mechanisms for holding governments to account for each other. Orbiting its core, politicians, business leaders, campaigners and journalists engage in lively debate about what climate action means in the real world.

Who is responsible for Cop26?

The UK and Italy are co-chairs of Cop26. Main As the organizer of her event, the UK government will play a greater role, in partnership with Scotland’s devolved administration. Italy will hold a pre-Cop conference in Milan.

Alok Sharma, a politician from the UK’s ruling Conservative Party, was appointed chairman of Cop26 in February 2020. Sharma stepped down from his ministerial responsibilities to focus on preparing for Cop26 after serving as business and energy minister for nearly a year.

UN Climate Change is responsible for continuing the annual climate negotiation process led by Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa.

UK’s Alok Sharma, the chairman of Cop26, met with China’s Special Envoy for Climate Affairs Xie Zhenhua in Tianjin, China (Pictured: Alok Sharma/Twitter/Flickr)

How will ambition be measured at Cop26?

A key responsibility of the Cop26 Presidency is to mobilize greater ambitions from other countries. This is primarily measured against the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement.

In 2015, 197 countries agreed in Paris to collectively cut emissions and keep global temperature rise “well below 2 degrees”, aiming for 1.5 degrees. To reach this target, all countries were asked to contribute to emission reductions and set targets to do so by 2025 or 2030. These plans are known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

This bottom-up approach means that the government will decide the speed of decarbonization of the economy. But plans submitted so far lead to warming well over 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to an analysis published by the Climate Action Tracker in May.

UN Climate Change has found that the updated plan by the end of 2020 puts the world on track to stabilize emissions by 2030. The scientist says that to stop warming at 1.5C, global emissions would have to be cut by 45% from his 2010 levels at that point.

Cop21 President Laurent Fabius holds up the language of the Paris Agreement (Photo: IISD/ENB/ Kiara Worth)

what needs to happen now?

Under the Paris Agreement, all countries agreed to renew their NDCs every five years, with each plan being more ambitious than the last and reflecting “highest possible ambition”.

Cop26, scheduled for 2020, will be the first test of this “ratchet mechanism.”

The US, Canada, the EU and the UK are among 110 countries (mostly developing countries) that have formally submitted their improved plans to the UN by the end of July. But many of the world’s largest emitters have failed to meet repeatedly extended deadlines. Plans for China, India and Saudi Arabia are not included in the list.

Others, such as Australia, have simply reaffirmed old targets without increasing their ambition.Brazil has even weakened its commitment by changing its baseline.

Ahead of Cop26, the UK needs to use its diplomatic clout to get Beijing, New Delhi and others to commit to stronger goals.

What else are organizers trying to achieve?

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson summed up the conference’s host country’s agenda as “coal, cash, cars and wood”. Let’s unpack it.

Coal: The UK wants Cop26 to be a ‘leave coal to history’ summit. The G7 agreed in May to end new government direct support for undiminished coal power by the end of 2021, but avoided setting an exit timeline for burning the fuel. rice field. Italy is seeking to coordinate similar pledges from the G20 against resistance from members such as China, Russia and India.

Cash: In 2009, developed countries agreed to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020. Germany and Canada are tasked with drawing up plans to close the gap ahead of Cop26. This is important to trust the recipient country’s process. Negotiations are set to begin on what the next target for collective finance after 2025 should be. In addition, there are various initiatives to “shift” private sector cash to achieve net zero emissions globally by the mid-20th century.

Cars: The UK wants to accelerate the switch to electric cars, proposing a 2040 deadline for the last petrol cars to be sold. China was not included in the list, but established the Zero Emission Vehicle Transition Council, bringing together ministers and representatives from major auto markets.

Trees: “Time for deforestation” is another Cop26 goal. The UK, along with the US and Norway, will launch the Reef Coalition, which aims to mobilize $1 billion in public and private funding in 2021 to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. rice field.

did they miss something?

That four-word soundbite doesn’t cover everyone’s priorities. The world’s poorest countries, which don’t have many cars or coal-fired power plants to worry about, want to see more action to address the impacts of climate change they are already experiencing.

The Paris Agreement established global targets for adaptation to climate impacts, but six years later, it remains unclear what that means in practice. The agreement has a section on loss and damage, recognizing that people are already losing their homes, lives and livelihoods due to extreme weather accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels in the industrialized world, but in reality support is lagging behind.

As the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated these climate vulnerabilities, the least developed countries are calling for a solidarity package that includes progress on these neglected topics.

It remains to be seen how progress on any of these elements will be packaged into the conference’s outcome. Some climate thinkers have proposed the Glasgow PACT.

UN Conference in Copenhagen, 2009 (Photo: UN Climate Change/Flickr)

what will you do negotiator Should I agree?

There are technical issues that the Glasgow negotiators have to deal with.

The Paris Agreement rulebook was due to be finalized three years ago at Cop24 in Katowice, Poland, but many issues remain unresolved.

These include new global carbon market rules under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. How to avoid double-counting of emission reductions, the role of old credits from the Kyoto climate regime under the new system, and whether to allocate some of the proceeds from the market to the Adaptation Fund are among the most troublesome. one of the big problems.

Negotiators also need to agree on transparency rules for reporting emission reductions and whether countries’ future climate plans should all cover the same five- or ten-year period.

Passengers getting their temperature checked at Incheon Airport in South Korea (Photo: Jens-Olaf Walter/Flickr)

What about the Covid-19 pandemic?

Organizers plan around 20,000 people to attend Cop26 in person despite the continuing threat of Covid-19 infection. claims to be.

However, significant inequalities in vaccine deployment between rich and poor countries have raised serious concerns about the participation of developing countries. As of 4 September, 64% of her in the UK population had been fully vaccinated. In many African countries this figure was less than 5% he.

Vaccination is not required to attend the summit, but UK organizers “strongly recommend” vaccination for all delegates. The UK government, along with the UN, set up the Cop26 vaccination program to provide jabs to delegates who cannot access vaccines in their home countries. The first dose is expected to reach delegates in September.

There are other financial and logistical barriers to participation. Delegates traveling from countries on the UK ‘Red List’ will be required to isolate in a quarantine hotel facility for 5 days if she is vaccinated or 10 days if she is not. The British government offered to contribute to the bill.

Covid-19 protocols have also been put in place for regular testing, masks and social distancing meetings.