Explainer: What is Cop26? | New Economics Foundation

This is an article in the fourth issue of New Economics Magazine.You can read the full question here.

The United Nations climate change conference Cop26 will be held in Glasgow in the coming weeks. The conference will be held from October 31st to November 12th and will be the first important UN climate summit since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. There has never been a policeman in the UK before, and this meeting is particularly important.

However, it is difficult for outsiders, and even most of the participants, to know exactly what will happen to the police (short for police) ‘Conference of the Parties”). Cop26 can be particularly puzzling.

The best way to understand it is to consider three concentric circles.The core is ‘The COP itself. This is the annual meeting of all countries that are signatories (“Contracting Parties”) to an international treaty called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). There are 196 of them, plus the European Union. At the meeting, the parties negotiated on international rules to deal with the climate crisis.

In most cases, Cop consists of technical negotiations that are of little interest to ordinary citizens. But occasionally brand new international agreements are signed, such as the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015). This year, the police will not do this, but it will see governments make new climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

“In most cases, Cop consists of technical negotiations that are of little interest to ordinary citizens. But occasionally a brand new international agreement is signed”

But a policeman is more than that. In the middle circle, Cop is a global conference for organizations and companies interested in the climate crisis. These people do not participate in formal meetings, but allow some particularly annoying activists to participate in plenary meetings. Instead, they come to hold fringe meetings and sell their goods and networks. Due to international travel restrictions related to the pandemic this year, there will be fewer attendees than usual, but thousands of people are still expected to attend.

Surrounding these two incidents are the public and demonstrators. They are not allowed to enter the security cordon, but they try to make the streets and the media feel their presence, thereby affecting what happens inside.

In the first week of the police, formal meetings are usually dull, so most of the attention is occupied by fringe meetings and demonstrations. But in the second week—when the government minister took over the negotiations between diplomats and civil servants—the situation became more intense.

This year’s Conference of the Parties will be particularly stimulating, because under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (a legally binding international treaty), this is a time when countries must make new and stronger commitments to climate action. The Paris Agreement requires that it be strengthened every five years (actually six years because Covid 26 is postponed from 2020).

With the climate crisis happening now before our eyes, it has never been more urgent to take stronger action. Countries need to reduce emissions faster. The rich need to provide more money to help the poor adapt.

But the puzzling thing about Cop26 is that countries will not actually make promises in Glasgow. According to the Paris Agreement, each country decides what to do for itself. Almost all countries/regions make advance announcements (“Nationally Determined Contributions” or NDCs). Most of the largest countries have already done so, including the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. China and India have already started operations, but they may also announce their nationally determined contributions before the meeting.

“But the puzzling thing about Cop26 is that countries will not actually make promises in Glasgow. “

So what can actually be negotiated? There are not many answers.There are more rules to be agreed, especially the extent to which rich countries and companies can agree ‘In the so-called “buying” of emission reductions in other countries ‘Carbon market”. But compared with the core issue of the state’s commitment, these rules are to a large extent only a small episode.

However, we can still look forward to fireworks, because we already know that national commitments are not enough. Even before they are all completed, it is clear that adding the commitments of all countries together is not enough to meet Paris’s desire to keep global heating temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than in the pre-industrial era, or even the weaker target of 2 degrees Celsius. Even the agreement reached in Paris (rich countries provide $100 billion a year to support poorer countries), financial commitments may not be fulfilled, let alone strengthen it.

This is what we call the Greater Glasgow Paradox. Even before the meeting started, it looked as if it was about to fail on the two biggest problems. But the negotiation agenda is not actually about these failures at all.

So what will happen? Three things seem likely. First, the poorest and most vulnerable countries will make a fuss.The police are unusual in international gatherings because—as ‘Victims of climate change-poor countries have considerable influence. They will exercise it. Expect them to use the conference venue to condemn the inadequacy of the promises made by the larger and richer countries. They may even go out to protest: someone has done this before.

Secondly, as the host country, the British government will strive to reach specific commitments in the conference communiqué. They are trying to get countries to agree to end financing and construction of coal-fired power stations, speed up the phase-out of gasoline and diesel vehicles, slow down deforestation, and mobilize private funds. They want to show that, therefore, emissions will go further than what the national commitment implies.

Third, world leaders will appear. Boris Johnson will preside over the summit between the prime minister and the president at the opening of the meeting. This is where it will become very interesting. Leaders do not usually go to the police: it is usually left to the Minister of Climate and Environment. But this is a major event. President Biden has said that he will attend, which makes it very likely that other world leaders will also attend. Then anything can happen. The last time a leader appeared at the Paris Police Conference in 2015, it helped create momentum for an agreement. But the previous time, at the Copenhagen meeting in 2009, the meeting was plunged into chaos and intense quarrels.

What will happen this time? Will harmony break out? Can leaders grasp victory from failure? we do not know. And now, neither do they. This is what makes Cop26 so uncertain and so important.

Michael Jacobs is a professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield, and was a climate advisor to former prime minister Gordon Brown.

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