Fighting deforestation, electric cars and emissions trading rules – what world leaders are trying to agree on at the UN climate summit in Glasgow.
Experts believe the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which opened in Glasgow, Scotland, on Oct. 31, may be the world’s last chance for industrial powers to agree on measures to slow global warming on the planet. .
Floods, droughts, food shortages – the consequences of global warming are noticeable today not only in developing countries, but also in rich countries. Against this backdrop, the meeting of world leaders in Britain could be the most significant conference in this area since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, observers say.
“Two decades ago we faced climate change. Today, we live in an ongoing emergency mode,” states Shikha Basin, senior analyst at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), an Indian research institute. – That’s why the COP26 conference is so important.
UN Climate Conference Agenda
The goal of the Paris Agreement was to prevent the average temperature on the planet in the 21st century from rising above two, or better, one and a half degrees Celsius. The consensus among policymakers and environmentalists was that this was the threshold beyond which climate change could have irreversible effects on all human and natural ecosystems.
In adopting the Paris Climate Agreement, its participants agreed to update their plans every five years to meet the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions enshrined in that document.
However, just weeks before COP26 in Glasgow, it turned out that China, India and Saudi Arabia did not publish their national climate goals in time (by July 31, 2021). According to UN Climate Change, the body responsible for organizing international climate negotiations, only half of the planet’s total emissions are subject to updated greenhouse gas reduction measures by September 2021.
UK demands
Against this background, the United Kingdom, which is, together with Italy, the host country of the UN climate summit in 2021, demanded that participating states provide updated plans, as well as develop specific agreements to achieve the stated climate goals. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for example, called on world leaders to make specific agreements “on coal, cars, finance, and trees.
The UK itself is pushing for a treaty that would “make lignite and hard coal history” and proposes to do away with internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2040. Another area of investment, from Johnson’s cabinet perspective, should be working to prevent deforestation on the planet.
Against the backdrop of massive climate protests around the world, the governments of some of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, particularly the United States and China, have already pledged to become climate neutral by mid-century.