Relief for leading nations at deal seen as ‘death sentence’ by vulnerable
The sweat beaded on COP26 president Alok Sharma’s forehead after last-minute word changes insisted on by India and China, but nearly 200 countries still agreed to a climate deal to avoid the worst effects of global warming even though it stopped short of reaching the Paris accord goals.
At a time of mounting public frustration over the warming planet — with protesters outside the venue every day — the gathering in Glasgow at times appeared on the brink of collapse as countries clashed over the use of fossil fuels, and the creation of new carbon markets, as well as damages payments from rich countries to poor.
The geopolitical drama gave way to concessions, as countries overcame their differences on the rules for the 2015 Paris climate accord which will enable the pact to take effect and become operational, for example with standards on how countries report their emissions.
However, they are not planning to cut emissions quickly enough to reach the temperature goals of the Paris accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C since preindustrial times, and ideally to about 1.5C. Temperatures have already risen 1.1C over that period.
Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, says the summit was nonetheless a “step forward”.
It helped shift the world’s trajectory from about 2.7C of expected warming, to roughly 1.8C or 1.9C, if all the national net zero targets were achieved, he told the FT.
“This is probably the COP meeting, after Paris, that has been most constructive,” said Rockström, pointing to the rule book and to the inclusion of “real world” pacts on the sidelines of the summit.
“On the other hand, as scientist, I’m also disappointed. We came to Glasgow knowing the science, and every nation had to align to get to 1.5C, and we didn’t get to that.”
The two-week summit, attended by more than 30,000 people from all over the world, was the biggest diplomatic event since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The UK decided not to scale down the event because of the virus, although health measures were in place.
As some 120 national leaders, including US President Joe Biden, descended on Glasgow during the opening days of COP26, the first week was marked by leader speeches, lofty pledges, and side deals.
The most significant of these was the US-led “Methane Pledge”, as more than 100 countries promised to cut emissions of methane, a potent warming gas.
However the critical technical negotiations became heated during the second week of the summit.
For years, the countries that signed the Paris accord have disagreed about how they should implement it and failed to agree on those rules at previous climate summits.
As the mood darkened during week two, some participants questioned whether the Glasgow COP might turn out to be similar to the failed Copenhagen summit in 2009.
Nations found themselves rehashing old disputes, for example about whether rich and poor countries should report emissions in the same way.
Signs of a breakthrough came on Wednesday evening, when the US and China made a joint declaration and signalled their intent to support a final deal, as their respective envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, joined forces with a mutual declaration.
China’s role was under scrutiny at the COP, after president Xi Jinping did not appear with the other world leaders for the opening, having not left Beijing since before the pandemic.
But in the final minutes of the summit on Saturday evening, India and China staged a dramatic intervention to weaken the language on coal and fossil fuels.
A compromise was reached on a pledge to phase “down” rather than phase “out” coal, leaving many vulnerable countries and small island states bitterly unhappy with the change.
COP26 President Alok Sharma said he was “deeply sorry” about the way events had unfolded, but urged countries to approve the deal lest it all unravel, appearing to be on the verge of tears.
The emotional moment was met with applause from the assembled ministers, who proceeded to approve the documents with the change.
The US defended the change on coal language as a necessary part of getting the deal done.
Sharma, speaking at a press conference, blamed fatigue for his emotional moment on the podium, but admitted that he had been “disappointed” by the last-minute change to the text. “Anyone who has seen the footage can make up their own mind about how I felt,” he said.
Given the obstacles of the pandemic and heightened geopolitical tensions, the summit was at times not expected to take place at all, after being delayed from 2020.
Laurence Tubiana, chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, and a key architect of the 2015 Paris accord, said the COP26 summit represented a “step forward”.
Having the “rule book” for the Paris climate agreement finally agreed was “particularly positive,” she said, so that it could be finally implemented. “It shows that peer pressure works,” she said. However countries needed to improve their emissions targets, she noted.
The Glasgow pact includes a request for countries to revisit their 2030 emissions targets by the end of next year.
As the summit concluded, several vulnerable and small island nations expressed “profound disappointment”.
Aminath Shauna, environment minister of the low-lying Maldives, said the deal did not “bring hope”, pointing out that big emitters not cutting emissions fast enough to limit warming to 1.5C.
“We have 98 months to halve global emissions,” she said. “The difference between 1.5C and 2C is a death sentence for us.”
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