The United Nations COP26 climate summit, which runs from 31 October to 12 November in Glasgow, UK, has been described as a âturning point for humanityâ and âthe most consequential summit⊠everâ.
Delayed due to the covid-19 pandemic, the meeting is by far the most important gathering on climate change since nearly 200 countries adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015. Where the Paris meetingâs job was to forge a new global treaty on curbing global warming, the task in Glasgow is to ensure that action is being delivered.
The pandemic meant vital in-person diplomacy to lay the groundwork for the summit was largely replaced by virtual meetings. Meanwhile, unequal access to covid-19 vaccines and the inequity around delegatesâ capacity to be in Glasgow has heightened old tensions between high- and low-income countries that have dogged past international climate summits.
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But it would be wrong to think that everything was rosy in 2015 and terrible now. âMy memory, but human memory in general, is pathetically short,â says Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of UN Climate Change. âWe look back at Paris in 2015 and assume everything was already ironed out.â That wasnât the case.
There is no single official goal for Glasgowâs outcome, but as hosts, COP26 president and the UK government have framed the meetingâs purpose as âkeeping 1.5°C aliveâ, a reference to the toughest of the Paris Agreementâs targets for limiting warming to less than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The main way of measuring that is the âemissions gapâ. This is the chasm between what nations have pledged in their climate plans â known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) â and what is needed to have a chance of staying under 1.5°C of warming.
New plans in the past year from the US and others narrowed the gap by 3.9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. But global annual emissions still need to be , a decrease equivalent to roughly half annual emissions now. Even new plans by China and India, which are hoped for in the coming days, have no hope of closing that.
Delegates will need to include something extra to show that the goal could still be met later. One idea is to make the worldâs warming goal unambiguously about 1.5°C, rather than the Paris Agreementâs fudge of âwell belowâ 2°C and to âpursue effortsâ for 1.5°C. Another is a commitment to come back every year with new and better NDCs instead of once every five years, as was agreed in Paris. A faster âratchet mechanismâ like that could feasibly let the 1.5°C target be met, but only if leaders then delivered stronger plans each year. Even the idea of that faster timetable will âbe bitterly resistedâ by some countries, says a veteran of international climate talks.
Another major issue for the summit to resolve is getting enough rich nations to fulfil their promises of climate finance to poorer ones for mitigating and adapting to a warmer world. A target of delivering $100 billion of mitigation a year by 2020 was missed by around $20 billion, and now the race is on to meet that goal before COP26 starts. Failure to do so will seriously damage trust between high- and low-income countries, a precious commodity at a meeting based on consensus, says at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh.
COP26 attendees donât have to thrash out a new treaty, but the meeting does have a formal element through which details on how countries tackle climate change in the coming years will be negotiated. This will happen out of public sight as delegates try to agree on an unfinished âParis rulebookâ, which includes vital rules on carbon-trading markets, transparency about nationsâ emissions cuts and common time frames for future NDCs.
Away from those negotiations will be the colourful side of COP26, where celebrities, business leaders and members of civil society from around the world congregate at the conference centre to press their issues, network and protest.
The first two main days of the summit will be dominated by the 100-plus heads of state who will give speeches in person, and others who join virtually. Expect those speeches to trumpet past progress and, in a few cases, announce new targets or policies.
The day after the speeches will focus on finance, which could see a recycling of old news such as to stop funding coal power beyond its borders, but the hope is for new announcements on financiers cutting support for fossil fuels. Other days focus on key thematic issues, such as nature on 6 November and adaptation â measures to cope with the effects of climate change like rising seas and more extreme weather â on 8 November.
Officially, the meeting draws to a close on 12 November. An overarching conclusion is expected to be agreed, but what that contains will be the test of whether COP26 âkept 1.5°C aliveâ.
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