COP26: a Success or Failure?

By Octavia Marshall

According to a report published in July by the International Journal of Climatology, ‘the 21st century so far has overall been warmer than the previous three centuries’, with ‘2020 [being] the third warmest year in the UK in a series from 1884’. Another report, published by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warns that a worst case scenario could see warming by as much as 3.3°C - 5.7°C by 2100, with the most likely scenario being 2.1°C - 3.5°C. This may not seem like much — warmer summers would likely be appreciated in this country — but this would have a huge effect on the climate, with more tropical storms, droughts, heatwaves and flooding. Communities all over the world would be affected, making the collaboration of governments essential.

This collaboration comes in the form of COP (Conference of the Parties, the United Nations climate change conference), which takes place annually in a different host country and brings together leaders from around the world to find solutions to the climate crisis. This year’s conference (referred to as COP26) was held in Glasgow from the 31st of October to the 13th of November, with the main goal of encouraging governments to cut emissions in order to ‘keep 1.5°C in reach’ (the target set at COP21 in Paris in 2015).

One of the successes of the summit was in recognising the importance of ending and reversing deforestation in mitigating global warming. Forests are huge carbon sinks, absorbing around 30% of atmospheric carbon emissions, while also providing the additional benefit of preventing soil erosion. Therefore, the potential impact of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use is very significant, with the World Resources Institute estimating that the equivalent of a ‘quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions from transportation from 2009-2018’ could be prevented from being released into the atmosphere. However, this is assuming that each of the 141 signatories keeps to the agreement of ending deforestation by 2030, which they are not legally bound to do.

A further success was the launching of the Breakthrough Agenda, which ‘commits countries to work together to make clean technologies and sustainable solutions the most affordable, accessible and attractive option in each emitting sector globally before 2030’. 42 countries launched the agenda, acknowledging the importance of moving economies away from being reliant on fossil fuels, which are currently the source of 80% of the world's energy. Additionally, the Global Methane Pledge has been signed by over 100 countries, which have all agreed to reduce global methane emissions by 30% by 2030; this is significant because methane has previously been a largely overlooked greenhouse gas, despite it making up around 20% of emissions and being potentially 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

However, not everyone is optimistic about the impacts these pledges will have. Greta Thunberg, the 18-year-old ‘Fridays For Future’ climate activist, has criticised the Glasgow Climate Pact for being “very, very vague”. She shares this opinion with many others, with one of the major controversies of the conference being the last-minute change of the ‘phasing out’ of coal to the ‘phasing down’ of coal due to opposition from India and China. There is also the issue of the lack of plans to fulfil the promises made, which is another reason why some campaigners are accusing COP of being ‘greenwashing’, a term used to describe something falsely appearing environmentally friendly.

Despite these concerns, COP’s importance is that it encourages governments to focus on protecting the climate, though this is perhaps not happening fast enough. Unfortunately, as Barack Obama said in his speech at the conference, “international cooperation has always been difficult” and while COP26 has certainly made progress in the fight against climate change, whether or not it will be enough to ‘keep 1.5°C in reach’ wholly depends on whether countries keep to their agreements in the decade to come.

For more information on COP26 and climate change: https://ukcop26.org

https://www.un.org/en/climatechange

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