8 | New Scientist | 30 October 2021
News COP26 preview
of once every five years, as was
agreed in Paris. A faster “ratchet
mechanism” like that could let
the 1.5°C target be met, but only if
stronger plans were then delivered
each year. Even the idea of that
faster timetable will “be bitterly
resisted” by some nations, says a
veteran of international climate
talks who didn’t want to be named.
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 andadapting 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 Saleemul Huq at the
International Centre for
Climate Change and
Development in Bangladesh.
COP26 attendees don’t 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 “Paris
rulebook”, which includes vital
rules on carbon-trading markets,
transparency about nations’
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
China’s pledge 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 – measures to cope
with the effects of climate change
like rising seas and more extreme
weather – 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 “kept 1.5°C alive”. ❚THE United Nations COP
climate summit, which runs
from 31 October to 12 November
in Glasgow, UK, has been
described as a “turning point
for humanity” and “the most
consequential summit... ever”.
Delayed due to the covid-
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 meeting’s 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 delegates’
capacity to be in Glasgow has
heightened old tensions
between high- and low-income
countries that have dogged past
international climate summits.
But it would be wrong to think
that everything was rosy in 2015
and terrible now. “My memory,
but human memory in general, is
pathetically short,” says Christiana
Figueres, former executive
secretary of UN Climate Change.
“We look back at Paris in 2015 and
assume everything was already
ironed out.” That wasn’t the case.
There is no single official goal
for Glasgow’s outcome, but
COP26 president Alok Sharma
and the UK government, as the
host, have framed the meeting’s
purpose as “keeping 1.5°C alive”,
a reference to the toughest of
the Paris Agreement’s targets
for limiting warming to less than
1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The main way of measuring that
is the “emissions gap”. This is the
chasm between what nations haveJEFF^ J^
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AGESThe summitWhat to expect at COP
Over the next five pages, Adam Vaughan explains everything you need to know about one of
the most significant climate summits ever, starting with the topics on the table at the meetingThe Scottish Event Campus
in Glasgow, UK, where
COP26 will take placepledged in their climate plans –
known as nationally determined
contributions (NDCs) – 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 20 to
23 billion tonnes of CO2 lower by
2030, a decrease equivalent to
roughly half of global 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 warming goal
unambiguously about 1.5°C, rather
than the Paris Agreement’s fudge
of “well below” 2°C and to “pursue
efforts” for 1.5°C. Another is to
commit to coming back every year
with new and better NDCs instead“ Whereas the 2015 Paris
meeting’s job was to forge
a treaty, COP26’s task is to
ensure action is happening”