The Guardian newspaper provides this very helpful summary of the upcoming Conference of Parties to be held in Glasgow from October 31.
What is Cop26?
For almost three decades, world governments have met nearly every year to forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), every country on Earth is treaty-bound to “avoid dangerous climate change”, and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally in an equitable way.
Cop stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015) and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009). This year is the 26th iteration, postponed by a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow.
When?
The conference will officially open on 31 October, a day earlier than planned, because of Covid-19, and more than 120 world leaders will gather in the first few days. They will then depart, leaving the complex negotiations to their representatives, mainly environment ministers or similarly senior officials. About 25,000 people are expected to attend the conference in total.
The talks are scheduled to end at 6pm on Friday 12 November, but past experience of Cops shows they are likely to extend into Saturday and perhaps even to Sunday.
Why do we need a Cop – don’t we already have the Paris agreement?
Yes – under the landmark Paris agreement, signed in 2015, nations committed to holding global temperature rises to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, while “pursuing efforts” to limit heating to 1.5C. Those goals are legally binding and enshrined in the treaty.
However, to meet those goals, countries also agreed on non-binding national targets to cut – or in the case of developing countries, to curb the growth of – greenhouse gas emissions in the near term, by 2030 in most cases.
Those national targets – known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs – were inadequate to hold the world within the Paris temperature targets. If fulfilled, they would result in 3C or more of warming, which would be disastrous.
Everyone knew at Paris that the NDCs were inadequate, so the French built into the accord a “ratchet mechanism” by which countries would have to return to the table every five years with fresh commitments. Those five years were up on 31 December 2020, but the pandemic prevented many countries coming forward.
All countries are now being urged to revise their NDCs before Cop26 in line with a 1.5C target, the lower of the two Paris goals. Scientists estimate that emissions must be reduced by 45% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels, and from there to net zero emissions by 2050, if the world is to have a good chance of remaining within the 1.5C threshold.
Are we nearly there?
No. The UN reported recently that current NDCs, including those that have been newly submitted or revised by the US, the EU, the UK and more than 100 others, are still inadequate. They would result in a 16% increase in emissions, far from the 45% cut needed. So much more remains to be done.
Is this all about China?
The world’s biggest emitter, China, has yet to produce a new NDC, and it is not yet known whether the president, Xi Jinping, will come to Glasgow. His attendance would be a major boost, but leading figures in the talks have said they can still have a successful outcome without his physical presence.
Xi announced last year that China would reach net zero emissions by 2060, a major step forward, and peak emissions by 2030. The latter pledge is regarded as insufficient, and could lead to the world breaching 1.5C. Analysts say China could cause emissions to peak by 2025, with some additional effort, and that this would be enough to keep the world on the right path.
China is not the only country in the frame: major fossil fuel producers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and Australia have also refused to strengthen their commitments. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is still presiding over the disastrous destruction of the Amazon.
There are also question marks over the commitment of the new Japanese government. India was close to committing to net zero last spring but was overtaken by the Covid crisis; its rapidly growing economy and dependence on coal make it a key country at the talks, and other developing nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa and Mexico will also be closely watched.
Why is 1.5C so important?
As part of the Paris agreement, the world’s leading authority on climate science – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – was charged with examining closely what a 1.5C temperature rise would mean for the planet. They found a vast difference between the damage done by 1.5C and 2C of heating, and concluded that the lower temperature was much safer.
An increase of 1.5C would still result in a rising sea levels, the bleaching of coral reefs, and an increase in heatwaves, droughts, floods, fiercer storms and other forms of extreme weather, but these would be far less than the extremes associated with a rise of 2C.
Further findings from the IPCC, released in August, underlined these warnings and concluded that there was still a chance for the world to stay within the 1.5C threshold but that it would require concerted efforts. Crucially, they also found that every fraction of a degree of increase is important.
How far do we have to go?
Temperatures around the world are already at about 1.1 – 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, and greenhouse gas emissions are still on an upward trend.
Carbon dioxide output plunged during the Covid-19 lockdowns last year, but that was temporary and they have surged again since as economies have recovered. To stay within 1.5C, global emissions need to come down by about 7% a year for this decade.
What about net zero?
To stay within 1.5C, we must stop emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases – from burning fossil fuels, from agriculture and animal husbandry – which create methane – from cutting down trees and from certain industrial processes – almost completely by mid-century. Any residual emissions remaining by then, for instance from processes that cannot be modified, must be offset by increasing the world’s carbon sinks, such as forests, peatlands and wetlands, which act as vast carbon stores. That balance is known as net zero.
Long-term goals are not enough, however. The climate responds to cumulative emissions, and carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about a century after it is released, so we could reach net zero by 2050 but still have emitted so much in the meantime that we exceed the 1.5C threshold irrevocably.
That is why scientists and politicians are calling the 2020s the crucial decade for the climate – if emissions can peak soon and be reduced rapidly, we can keep cumulative emissions from growing too much, and still have a chance of staying within 1.5C.
Is Cop26 just about 1.5C?
The NDCs are the central part of the negotiations, and getting more countries to sign up to a long-term net zero goal is also important. But the UK presidency also hopes to help achieve these goals with a focus on three other areas: climate finance, phasing out coal, and nature-based solutions.
3 Comments
Comments are closed.