Governments, civil society, and media representatives will meet in Glasgow, Scotland during the next two weeks to discuss ways to increase climate action.
The international summit COP26 is the 26th iteration of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change .
In 2015 in Paris, countries agreed to limit the global temperature rise to 2ºC by the end of the century, making every effort to avoid 1.5ºC.
Nevertheless, with the current NDCs, global warming would only be limited to 2.7ºC, according to UN estimations.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries have to improve their plants every five years — and that time is now.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia pledged to reach net-zero by 2060 but without changing its role as the world’s leading oil producer, raising questions on the substance of its plan.
A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , a leading group of climate experts, from August found that the world still has a chance to stay within the 1.5ºC threshold.
Getting a 1.5ºC increase will still lead to extreme weather events such as heatwaves, floods, and heavy storms, as well as rising sea levels and bleaching of corals.
While improving climate commitments will be a central part of the talks in Glasgow, the UK, acting as the COP26 president, is also focusing on three other areas: climate finance, phasing out coal, and nature-based solutions.
Climate finance essentially refers to the money that is provided to underdeveloped countries from public and private sources to help them reduce their emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.
About 150 environmental groups wrote a letter to donor countries earlier this month asking them to mobilize $600 billion between 2020 and 2025, which would be more realistic to their needs.
China, the main coal consumer in the world, announced earlier this year that it will stop financing new coal-fired plants in other countries.
India, Indonesia, Australia, and many other countries are still large producers and consumers of coal.
Still, experts argue this won’t solve the climate crisis alone and that our reliance on fossil fuels also has to end.
While the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, not every aspect was fully finalized because of the many disagreements between countries.
This market would allow countries to finance projects that reduce emissions in other countries and count the avoided emissions towards their own climate targets.
The UK hopes to resolve this issue in Glasgow so countries can have this mechanism in place to better deliver on their climate targets.
But whether we allow it to continue and worsen will depend on the actions taken today by governments, both from developed and developing countries.