Negotiator at United Nations Climate Summit Glasgow is expected to hold a meeting on Friday, which will be the last day of bargaining on how to prevent global warming from becoming catastrophic.
After nearly two weeks of talks, nearly 200 countries attending the summit still have differences on a series of issues, from how rich countries should compensate poor countries for damage caused by climate disasters to how often countries should be required to renew their emission commitments.
“There is still a lot of work to be done,” Alok Sharma, the British chairman of the COP26 summit, told reporters on Thursday about the state of the negotiations.
COP26: The Secretary-General of the United Nations calls for ambitious agreements as a “life support” global warming goal
The core goal of the COP26 meeting is to maintain the ideal goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is to control global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial levels and avoid the most serious impact of climate change.
But according to countries’ current commitments to reduce emissions during this decade, researchers say that global warming will far exceed this limit, triggering catastrophic sea level rise, floods and droughts.
Although there is little hope of a new commitment to bridge this gap on the last day of negotiations, negotiators are trying to put forward new requirements to force countries to increase their commitments in the future, hoping to achieve the 1.5C goal quickly enough.
For example, the draft COP26 agreement distributed earlier this week will force countries to upgrade their climate targets in 2022, and climate-vulnerable countries hope they can strengthen mandatory annual reviews to ensure that the world stays on track.
‘Improving constantly’
“Glasgow must be a time when every COP will raise its ambitions as an ongoing process, and this year’s COP decided that it must authorize the annual ambition to raise the platform before 2025 to ensure that this goal is achieved,” former Maldives President and Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed (Mohamed Nasheed) said. Ambassadors of 48 countries’ Climate Vulnerability Forum Group.
“This decade requires action. 2030 feels like the edge of a cliff, and we are running towards it,” said Nicolas Galarza, Colombia’s Deputy Minister of Environment.
A senior US official said that the world’s largest economy supports strengthening the goal to achieve the Paris goal, but cannot support the COP26 agreement’s requirement for an annual review of commitments.
Currently, countries must re-examine their commitments every five years.
The draft COP26 agreement calls on countries to strengthen their climate commitments. But is this enough?
Negotiators also debated the language of phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in the COP26 conclusion, and Arab countries—many of which are large fossil fuel producers—have warned about this.
Frans Timmermans, the head of EU climate policy, said on Thursday that deleting the language “would be an extremely, extremely bad signal.”
Financing issues continue to loom over negotiations, and developing countries are pushing for stricter rules to ensure that rich countries (whose historical emissions are primarily responsible for global warming) provide more cash to help the poorest countries adapt to climate impacts.
The ministers are also trying to finalize the controversial rules that put the Paris Agreement into practice, calling for an agreement on the carbon market and the many years of disputes over transparency.
The final agreement will require the unanimous agreement of nearly 200 countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement.
On Thursday night, diplomats squatted down to discuss the technical terms of the Paris Rulebook, while in other negotiating rooms, their government ministers debated other political problems.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Giles Elgood)
