What is the COP 26?
COP stands for the Conference of the Parties and those involved are the countries that signed the 1994 treaty for UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). This November, Glasgow will be hosting the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference from Nov 1-12.
The goal of this conference is to bring all of the participating parties of the UNFCCC together to agree on goals and partnerships to achieve realistic global targets. The COP21 in 2015 brought forth the Paris Agreement which was signed by 196 parties. All COPs after this use the agreement as a framework to discuss how to actually achieve the targets that have been set out in the agreement. The key issues discussed are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, keeping the global temperature increase below 1.5C, and have $100 billion to invest in climate finance in order to help poorer countries . Due to Covid-19, the convention got delayed until late this year but we can look back on the events that occurred in the 2019 COP25 to see what we can expect this year.
COP 25 and 26: Difficulties and Outcomes
COP25 took place in Madrid in 2019, and was 2 weeks of negotiations and raising awareness of the issues brought forth by climate change. Greta Thunberg, a prominent activist, gave a speech to inspire those attending to work around differences and to leave the conference with solutions in mind. However, many say that the outcome of the conference was disappointing, as many consensus could not be reached. This would mean that decisions on how to act and what countries would need to do would be pushed until 2020 when deciding other UN climate actions.
A key issue of the conference was that debates were filled mostly around technicalities of words and frameworks rather than communicating on possible solutions. For example, the rules for different carbon markets were discussed in detail about what carbon credits are rather than concluding with a solution to follow through with it when it was already brought up in the Paris Agreement. Furthermore, many people felt that although many activists were enthusiastic about creating change, many of those actually involved in the debates were not making any progress forward. Many decisions were extremely difficult to make due to not meeting a consensus and the overall conclusion was to ‘cut carbon dioxide’ which was disappointing as many other issues were not resolved.
What can we expect this year?
So what will COP 26 have to discuss this year? With one of the plans last year being to cut carbon, it seems the expectation for this year is for world leaders to come together and discuss the progress they have made with this in the past year. The COP26 is expecting many of the wealthier countries to deliver $100bn in climate finance this November while also creating the next target for climate finance for 2025.
According to ECIU, the main discussions this year will be on the following:
Carbon market mechanisms : Countries could purchase carbon credits from other countries to be allowed to continue emitting carbon in the selling country’s borders
Nature-based solutions: Using nature like forests and agriculture to absorb carbon and protect countries from climate change impacts.
Delivering $100 billion for climate finance: Providing financial aid to countries which are experiencing difficulties or damage from climate change
Hopefully this past year has given countries a bit more time to deal with these targets and that concrete objectives and negotiations will be successfully made later this year. If you are curious about what the University of Edinburgh is doing in participation with COP26 and their environmental goals, you can check here.
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