Even trying to speak to you now, it’s so loud around us. So maybe
that’s the point, so that they can deliver their
message as loudly as possible.
And do you think they’ll be heard? I mean, it’s completely detached
almost to what is happening over there.
COP26 was billed as the last best chance to save the planet. Many
of the world’s most powerful leaders, climate scientists and activists
descended on Glasgow with an aim to do just that. But how successful have
they been, and is what’s happened inside this conference centre really
going to solve our climate emergency?
The negotiations are a more formal process, behind closed
doors it’s difficult to understand what’s happening in the conference.
Sam Meredith is a correspondent for CNBC covering climate, health and
international politics. He’s been in Glasgow for the duration of COP26
writing about the stories both inside and outside the conference center.
How has COP26 gone?
Yeah, okay, so I think it’s important to say that in the run up to the summit,
expectations were very low, and they were actually made
lower by world leaders and diplomats.
Part of the problem for COP26, I suppose, is that there’s going to be no headline
agreement that comes out of this. This COP is about determining whether the
Paris agreement from six years ago is fit for purpose.
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement committed countries to limit global warming to no
more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an aim for 1.5 degrees. But climate
scientists say that 1.5 degrees Celsius needs to be more than just an aim. They say if global
average temperatures rise by more than that, the earth will likely experience more extreme
climate change effects, such as an increased risk of drought and flooding.
I don’t get a sense that a lot of people are
talking about 1.5. Why is that?
Yeah, well it depends which people you’re referring to, I suppose. I think if it’s
low-income leaders we saw the Barbados prime minister, for example, Mia Mottley
delivering a very powerful speech.
1.5 is what we need to survive. 2 degrees,
yes SG (Secretary General) is a death sentence.
Global warming already stands at 1.1 degrees Celsius and is rising and
despite countries’ targets for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, the world is still
on track for a 2.4 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century.
So, what came out of the COP26 negotiations?
The Glasgow Climate Pact, which was agreed on by 197 members. It’s the first ever
climate deal to explicitly plan to reduce coal, the worst fossil fuel for greenhouse gases.
It also resolved to pursue efforts to limit the temperature
increase to that all important 1.5 degrees Celsius.
While each country’s climate commitments are not legally binding, negotiations around
specific words carried on well past the deadline. In the end
there was disappointment that countries agreed that instead of phasing out coal,
they would phase down, following opposition from China and India.
“I apologise for the way this process has unfolded, and I am deeply sorry.”
The start of the conference was a lot more upbeat, following a flurry of wide
reaching pre-arranged pledges that created a buzz to kick off proceedings.
Significant ones include pledges by the world’s biggest CO2 emitters, the
U.S. and China, to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature goal.
The U.S. also announced a partnership with the EU and likeminded parties to
cut global methane emissions from 2020 levels by 30% before the end of the decade.
More than 20 countries made new commitments to phase out coal power. And India pledged
to cut its emissions to net zero by 2070.
India is an interesting example because it is not historically as responsible as others
for the climate crisis, so there is less onus on it as such to commit to more
stringent goals that you might expect other rich countries to do so.
It can and possibly should do more but it's a significant development for them to commit to 2070.
India argued that other developing countries still have to “deal with their development
agendas and poverty eradication" before phasing out coal and fossil fuels.
In particular, it led calls for richer nations to provide financial
aid for emerging markets to deal with climate change.
I think a key test will be finance. This was imperative to rebuilding trust between the
countries in the global north and those in the global south. So in 2009 in Copenhagen
at COP15, we had rich countries pledging to deliver 100 billion dollars a year by 2020
and of course, we’re still not there with rich countries delivering that 100 billion dollars.
That's a big problem for repairing trust.
We’re not expected for that to be delivered until 2023, and
it was also a largely symbolic figure anyway because the real
costs of what it will take to transition to net zero will be trillions.
While a number of richer countries promised more funds for climate finance, the U.S. and
the EU resisted calls from developing countries to create a funded facility
for climate disaster victims over fears of incurring billions in damages.
The pledges made so far also fall short of capping temperature rises below 1.5C.
Based on the real-world action of current policies, temperatures will rise by 2.7C.
If Nationally Determined Contributions targets for 2030 are fully implemented,
then temperatures are estimated to rise by 2.4C. If alongside that, all
long-term targets were fulfilled then it would drop to around 2.1C.
And even in the unlikely event there is a full implementation of every target,
ever announced, the best-case scenario is a temperature rise of 1.8C.
Delegates did however agree to set tougher climate pledges before the
COP27 meeting in Egypt next year. While critics accused the member states of
“kicking the climate can down the road”, others say that countries would not have
had to resubmit new climate commitments until 2025 under the Paris Agreement, so
any agreement to “ratchet” up action within 12 months would be a big win.
What’s been the opinion of business leaders here at COP26 on what's been agreed?
I'm sure they've been watching quite closely.
Yeah, of course. Well on finance day at COP, we saw the former bank of England governor
Mark Carney, who’s also a UN special envoy on climate announce GFANZ, so many acronyms
at COP, this was yet another one. It’s the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.
Just about got it.
Thanks. So, this initiative, he says, mobilized 130 trillion dollars from
financial institutions and asset managers to net zero commitments. That sounds like
a lot of money, It’s around 40% of the world's capital, which again seems like a big deal.
Critics of this though suggest there are too many loopholes for
this to be an effective solution to meet the demands of the climate emergency.
However, climate activists outside the conference centre are not convinced that
COP26, or more summits for that matter, will bear any real fruits. Rather than
voluntary contributions, they are calling for regulation and enforcement, and accused
businesses of greenwashing.
‘This is no longer a climate conference. This is now a global north greenwash festival.’
Leading youth climate activist Greta Thunberg wasn’t invited to COP26, and many critics of
the conference argue there haven’t been enough young people present
to put pressure on the decision makers.
I really expected there to be many more young people than we’ve seen.
Particularly when all the protests, the climate protests, tend to be led by young people.
Exactly, I think that’s been really noticeable, particularly in the main hub
of the event where lots of the world leaders are based.
There were a couple particularly moving speeches. There was one from an environmental
advocate from Samoa. Her name was Brianna Fruean.
‘This is our warrior cry to the world. We are not drowning. We are fighting.’
We also heard from an indigenous Amazonian activist; her name was Txai Suruí.
‘My father, the great chief Almir Surui taught me that we must listen to the stars,
the moon, the wind, the animals and the trees.’
I spoke to a spokesperson for the COP26 coalition which is a civil society group
that represents communities from the global south, and they’ve described this event as
one of the most exclusionary that they’ve known.
They feel like they’ve been locked out of the talks and even when it comes to accessing
these talks remotely, there have been problems online as well,
which I know that the UN has apologized for, so it’s been a problem.
What would a really successful cop26 have looked like?
It’s really difficult to define what a successful summit would look like.
But the pledges that we’ve seen particularly at the start of the summit gave some reason for
optimism. Some of the experts I’d spoken to had talked about their expectations being surpassed.
You have to think if you’re trying to be optimistic about this that there is hope here,
but we can’t know yet and we need to look at it through that sceptical lens because there have
been passed commitments which have not lived up to their billing.
So, it’s very hard to think that all the countries that ratified the Paris agreement
six years ago can leave Glasgow knowing that they’ve done all they could to keep 1.5 alive.