What progress has been made on the key climate commitments of COP26?

Dur­ing his final address at the Unit­ed Nations’ COP26 cli­mate sum­mit in Glas­gow last Novem­ber, the conference’s pres­i­dent, Alok Shar­ma, declared: “We can now say with cred­i­bil­i­ty that we have kept 1.5 degrees alive. But its pulse is weak and it will sur­vive only if we keep our promis­es and trans­late com­mit­ments into rapid action.”

As COP27 approach­es, it seems that the chances of keep­ing the Earth’s aver­age tem­per­a­ture to 1.5C above its pre-indus­tri­al lev­el remain slim. While del­e­gates in Glas­gow made many pos­i­tive com­mit­ments, the wide-reach­ing socioe­co­nom­ic crises that have struck since then have pre­vent­ed most of these from being hon­oured.

Fac­tors such as the spi­ralling price of fuel and oth­er essen­tials – exac­er­bat­ed by Russia’s war with Ukraine – have meant that many gov­ern­ments’ pledges to tack­le cli­mate change have fall­en by the way­side. Sim­i­lar­ly, the relax­ation of Covid-19 restric­tions on trav­el and oth­er eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties have caused car­bon diox­ide emis­sions to rise by 6% year on year.

Ioan­nis Ioan­nou, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of strat­e­gy and entre­pre­neur­ship at Lon­don Busi­ness School, is a spe­cial­ist in sus­tain­able busi­ness. He reports that, “unfor­tu­nate­ly, progress has not been as expect­ed. Very few coun­tries have updat­ed their com­mit­ments to make them more ambi­tious, as was the orig­i­nal plan.”

The main goals of COP26 includ­ed: accel­er­at­ing the phas­ing out of coal as an ener­gy source; increas­ing invest­ment in renew­ables; cur­tail­ing defor­esta­tion; mobil­is­ing $100bn in cli­mate finance for devel­op­ing nations; increas­ing uptake of elec­tric vehi­cles; and devel­op­ing adap­ta­tion strate­gies.

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero gains – and loses – members

One key out­come of COP26 was the for­ma­tion of the Glas­gow Finan­cial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a coali­tion of banks, asset man­agers and insur­ers, with total assets exceed­ing $130tn. This has com­mit­ted to help finance the glob­al tran­si­tion to net zero.

But two pen­sion funds quit the alliance last month, while it has been report­ed that three of the largest sig­na­to­ries – Bank of Amer­i­ca, JPMor­gan and Mor­gan Stan­ley – have been threat­en­ing to leave. 

The GFANZ’s co-chair and UN spe­cial envoy for cli­mate action and finance, Mark Car­ney, spoke to British MPs at a par­lia­men­tary envi­ron­men­tal audit com­mit­tee on 24 Octo­ber. He assured them that the CEOs of those three firms had shown “no inten­tion” to leave, stress­ing that the net total of busi­ness­es involved in the alliance had increased by 100 since COP26. 

Car­ney, the for­mer gov­er­nor of the Bank of Eng­land, point­ed out that the GFANZ’s col­lec­tive asset base was “one of the few fig­ures in [cli­mate] finance that has grown over the course of the past year… from $130tn to $150tn.”

A year ago, one in five com­pa­nies had com­mit­ted to net zero. Now the pro­por­tion is clos­er to one in three. This shows us that there’s increas­ing com­mit­ment

The vol­un­tary nature of the alliance has been crit­i­cised by some envi­ron­men­tal­ists, who argue that it amounts to lit­tle more than green­wash­ing. Although Car­ney said that a statu­to­ry approach would be wel­come, he added that “a vol­un­tary sys­tem is bet­ter than no sys­tem at all”.

A key com­mit­ment made back in 2009 at COP15 in Copen­hagen was for devel­oped nations to pro­vide $100bn in cli­mate finance to devel­op­ing coun­tries each year. It was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for this tar­get to be met by 2020 and there were hopes that it might be achieved last year, but EU finance min­is­ters don’t expect it to hap­pen until 2023.

Deforestation commitments ring hollow

Dur­ing COP26, the lead­ers of 145 coun­tries signed a dec­la­ra­tion to halt and reverse defor­esta­tion by 2030, while CEOs from 30 finan­cial insti­tu­tions pledged to elim­i­nate invest­ments in activ­i­ties linked to defor­esta­tion.

At the time, it was described as a “land­mark agree­ment”, but there are already fears that the tar­get will be missed. Although the rate of destruc­tion fell by 6.3% in 2021, Ama­zon­ian defor­esta­tion hit record lev­els and world­wide an esti­mat­ed 27,000 square miles of for­est were lost. 

David Gibbs, a research asso­ciate with the World Resources Institute’s Glob­al For­est Watch, told The Guardian: “We are quick­ly mov­ing towards anoth­er round of hol­low com­mit­ments and van­ished forests.”

The net-zero commitment gap

At the clos­ing stages of COP26, near­ly every nation agreed to the Glas­gow cli­mate pact. One of the main stick­ing points dur­ing talks was a pledge to phase out coal. The word­ing was changed to “phase down” to appease the Indi­an del­e­ga­tion.

Two years before the pact was signed, only 30% of the world’s emis­sions were cov­ered by net-zero tar­gets, where­as now the fig­ure is about 89%. This gap in net-zero com­mit­ments remains.

There have been improve­ments from the pri­vate sec­tor. Kaya Axels­son is net-zero pol­i­cy engage­ment fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford and a strate­gic advis­er to the UN’s Race to Zero cam­paign. She says: “A year ago, one in five com­pa­nies had com­mit­ted to net zero. Now the pro­por­tion is clos­er to one in three. This shows us that there’s increas­ing com­mit­ment.” 

But Axels­son adds: “We’re start­ing to see that, as the cri­te­ria for what it takes to meet net zero in line with the 1.5C tar­get tight­en, there has been a back­lash from some com­pa­nies and finance organ­i­sa­tions that are real­is­ing this is actu­al­ly a real­ly hard thing to do.”

Analy­sis from cli­mate consultan­cy EcoAct shows that, although many busi­ness­es have set out their inten­tions to cut emis­sions, they have yet to meet the required reduc­tions. It means that many such com­mit­ments are unlike­ly to be hon­oured.

What needs to be achieved at COP27?

COP27, due to start in Sharm El Sheikh on 6 Novem­ber, has been described as an imple­men­ta­tion con­fer­ence. It’s wide­ly viewed as a chance for many of the pledges made at pre­vi­ous events to be put into action. 

The event “will help us to take stock of where we are. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we’re always behind,” says Axels­son, who hopes that pol­i­cy-mak­ers will make inno­v­a­tive use of the mech­a­nisms at their dis­pos­al to tack­le the cli­mate cri­sis

“We need a con­ver­sa­tion about the how, not just the what,” she stress­es. “This is going to be a COP where we real­ly reck­on with the need for finance in emerg­ing mar­kets, giv­en that it will be held in Africa – and con­sid­er­ing the rage and dis­ap­point­ment felt at COP26 when the $100bn cli­mate finance tar­get was missed.”

I have low expec­ta­tions going into COP27 and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, I fear that even those might not be met

Speak­ing on 17 Octo­ber at the han­dover of the COP pres­i­den­cy, Shar­ma admit­ted that there was still a “big deficit in polit­i­cal will… We have to ques­tion whether all our inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions have ful­ly inter­nalised the grave urgency of our cli­mate sit­u­a­tion.”

Accord­ing to Ioan­nou, COP27 should be seen as a chance for gov­ern­ments to “get their act togeth­er” and meet the com­mit­ments made to the devel­op­ing world.

“We saw the pri­vate sec­tor real­ly step up at COP26. But now, giv­en the geopol­i­tics and the poten­tial for rever­sal, we real­ly need pol­i­cy to step up too,” he says. “I have low expec­ta­tions going into COP27 and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, I fear that even those might not be met.”

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