POLLUTION

With these words, holding back tears, Alok Sharma, president of the COP26 climate conference held in Glasgow in November 2021, closed the meeting on Saturday the 13th. He was referring to the late change in wording regarding the use of fossil fuels, and possibly about the outcome of the treaty: was the conference really useful in slowing down global warming? 

The 26th annual Conference of Parties (COP26), organized by the UN, had as an aim to reach a consensus between countries on actions to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Furthermore, the Treaty of Paris will be re-examined, as the countries will be asked to make more ambitious pledges to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions.

In the opening stages of the conference, which started on the 31st October, more than 120 world leaders met to outline the countries’ commitments, but the bulk of the work, arriving to a common agreement, was left to diplomats and ministers in the following weeks. 

The UK, which holds the presidency of the conference alongside with Italy, set four goals to reach throughout the meeting: global net zero and 1.5C, as mentioned previously, protect communities and natural habitats, mobilise finance and collaboration. To achieve these goals, countries had to work together and make commitments that led to these targets. As an example, to meet the first goal, countries will need to progressively phase out coal, invest in renewables and tackle deforestation. Furthermore, developed nations have been asked to act on their pledge of providing at least $100bn in climate funding.

On November 13th, all of the 197 participating countries agreed on a new deal, called the Glasgow Climate Pact, in which all the nations pledged to take action against climate change. More specifically, the pact countries have pledged to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to 45 percent by 2030 relative to 2010, and to reach net zero by 2050. Maintaining the existing pledges and climate policies, the emissions in 2030 would be 14% higher compared to the ones in 2010.

The Glasgow Climate Pact is revolutionary in the history of COP, which started in 1995 in Berlin, because it is the first agreement to explicitly cite coal, oil and natural gas as a major cause for climate change. For this reason, the deal signed on the 13th November is the first to unequivocally plan to reduce the use of fossil fuels, something which for sure should have been agreed on previously. The agreement, which was supposed to be signed on Saturday the 12th, was modified the following day, after China and India, which combined have emitted 33.6% of the global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, asked for some changes. These adjustments included changes in the wording regarding the usage of fossil fuels, which was modified from “phase out the abated use of fossil fuels” to “phase down”. 

Nonetheless, the question arises: was COP26 a success? Partly. The positives are that a concrete agreement with clear goals and pledges has finally been reached: a major improvement compared to the previous deals. Furthermore, another milestone has been accomplished: 40 countries have pledged to move away from coal as a source of electric power, although the big contributors to global CO2 emissions, such as India and China, have not agreed to the pledge. Another positive aspect of the deal is that more developed countries have pledged to up their cashflow towards poorer, underdeveloped countries, in a way to help them transition to renewable energy and to cope with the effects of climate change. 

However, this pact has arguably arrived late, since the negative effects of greenhouse gases have been known to scientists from the early 20th century. Additionally, climate projections by CAT (Climate Action Tracker) have shown that the pledges which the 197 countries have agreed on are far from meeting the +1.5C goal, stated back in 2015 in the Paris Agreement. These simulations show that the median temperature increase by the end of the century if all the long and short term pledges are fulfilled is 2.1C. 

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Larsen, Kate, et al. “China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Exceeded the Developed World for the First Time in 2019.” Rhodium Group, Rhodium Group, LLC, 6 May 2021, https://rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-countries/.

“The Cat Thermometer.” Climate Action Tracker, 9 Nov. 2021, https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/.

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