What is COP26? Your guide to this year’s climate change conference

Between 1 and 12 Novem­ber, world lead­ers will descend on the city of Glas­gow for what is being billed as “the world’s best last chance to get cli­mate change under con­trol”. 

Each Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties, or COP, is an annu­al gath­er­ing of the 197 par­ty mem­bers of the Unit­ed Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UNFCCC). As the 26th con­fer­ence, COP26 will be held at Glasgow’s Scot­tish Event Cam­pus where cli­mate experts, cam­paign­ers, pol­i­cy mak­ers and world lead­ers will debate how best to avoid the worst effects of cli­mate change.

The cli­mate con­fer­ence was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for 2020 but was post­poned due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. This sum­mit rep­re­sents the first chance for the attend­ing coun­tries to pro­vide an update on their progress towards the goals of the Paris agree­ment, which were first set out dur­ing COP21 in 2015.

As part of the agree­ment, 191 coun­tries have now for­mal­ly joined the Paris agree­ment and com­mit­ted to lim­it glob­al warm­ing to below 2 degrees and aim for 1.5 degrees – a tem­per­a­ture rise that sci­en­tists believe would sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the risks of glob­al warm­ing.

Under the terms of the Paris treaty, each nation agreed to pro­vide an update of their plans to reduce emis­sions at every fifth COP sum­mit. COP26 will there­fore be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the cur­rent state of play and how far along each coun­try is in achiev­ing its net-zero tar­gets. 

Who will be attending?

All coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries that have signed up to the UNFCCC – an inter­na­tion­al treaty to com­bat cli­mate change – will be in atten­dance. It is esti­mat­ed that a total of 30,000 peo­ple will trav­el to Glas­gow as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of more than 200 coun­tries, as well as busi­ness lead­ers, NGOs and faith groups.

Among the most high-pro­file guests are Queen Eliz­a­beth II and Pope Fran­cis, who plans to attend if his health allows. How­ev­er, cli­mate activist Gre­ta Thun­berg remains unde­cid­ed on whether she will trav­el to the con­fer­ence, claim­ing she will only go if doing so is “con­sid­ered safe and demo­c­ra­t­ic” for all coun­tries.

What are the goals of COP26?

For many, COP26 is con­sid­ered one of the last chances for the world to find a way to curb the worst effects of cli­mate change. The lat­est Unit­ed Nations Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) report, released last month, high­light­ed the lack of suf­fi­cient action from polit­i­cal lead­ers to com­bat the cli­mate cri­sis and warned that many changes were now irre­versible and the 1.5 degree tar­get would be exceed­ed if imme­di­ate action is not tak­en.

To that end, there are four key goals of the Glas­gow COP26 sum­mit: 

• To secure glob­al net zero by 2050, keep­ing the 1.5‑degree glob­al warm­ing lim­it with­in reach

• Adapt to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties and nat­ur­al habi­tats around the world, to improve their resilience against cli­mate change

• To mobilise finance through devel­oped coun­tries deliv­er­ing on the promise to raise $100bn in cli­mate finance per year to sup­port devel­op­ing coun­tries

• To work togeth­er to agree on, deliv­er and rise to the chal­lenges of cli­mate change.

What should we expect from this year’s COP26 summit?

Coun­tries are expect­ed to come for­ward with ambi­tious tar­gets for reach­ing net zero and reduc­ing their car­bon emis­sions. Restora­tion of nat­ur­al ecosys­tems will also be a pri­or­i­ty, as well as pro­tect­ing exist­ing ones, from the impacts of cli­mate change, such as through the con­struc­tion of more resilient infra­struc­ture, defences and warn­ing sys­tems.

Dis­cus­sions around financ­ing the tran­si­tion to a more sus­tain­able world are also set to con­tin­ue. The Paris agree­ment reaf­firmed a com­mit­ment from devel­oped nations to pledge $100bn per year to com­bat cli­mate change by 2020. With that dead­line now passed, COP26 is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reassess the cli­mate finances. There is also like­ly to be greater empha­sis on finan­cial insti­tu­tions and pri­vate finance to sup­port the pub­lic sec­tor finance in achiev­ing this goal.

What does it mean for business leaders?

It is recog­nised that these tar­gets for net-zero emis­sions can only be achieved with col­lab­o­ra­tion between gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es and wider soci­ety. Busi­ness will there­fore have an impor­tant role to play and many are reassess­ing their cli­mate change com­mit­ments ahead of COP26. 

Dur­ing the G7 sum­mit ear­li­er this year, COP26 pres­i­dent Alok Shar­ma called on busi­ness­es to take action to address cli­mate change. He said: “In the fight against cli­mate change, it is vital that we have the inge­nu­ity, influ­ence and ener­gy of the pri­vate sec­tor on our side.” 

Since the start of the year, there has been a 47% increase in major com­pa­nies sign­ing up to the Unit­ed Nations’ ‘Race to Zero’ cam­paign. To date, 3,067 busi­ness­es and 173 investors have joined the coali­tion com­mit­ting to halve car­bon emis­sions by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050, at the lat­est. Some of the inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­es to sign up to the cam­paign include Nis­san, Net­flix and Mas­ter­card. 

With the UK host­ing this year’s con­fer­ence, there has been increased atten­tion on cli­mate change and net-zero goals with­in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty here. Con­ser­v­a­tive MP and race to net zero cham­pi­on Andrew Grif­fith, recent­ly wrote to the CEOs of the FTSE 100 encour­ag­ing them to set net zero tar­gets ahead of COP26. So far, almost half of these com­pa­nies have signed up to the race to zero cam­paign.

Com­pa­nies will also be present at the sum­mit in Glas­gow. Among the busi­ness­es that have part­nered with COP26 are Microsoft, Unilever, Sky, Natwest Group, Sains­bury’s and the Nation­al Grid.