What happened at COP26?
At the beginning of November, delegates from every nation in the world arrived in Glasgow for COP26, the UN conference on climate change. COPs (in full, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) happen annually but the big ones are every five years or so. COP26 was particularly critical, being the first major gathering since the Paris Agreement in 2015; the first test of whether countries would live up to their promises on climate change.
I wanted to see two key results from COP26: an outcome which will limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, and one which is fair to the Global South. In a nutshell, we needed to see ambition and the money. Third on my list would be recognition of nature’s role in limiting warming, such as the way forests and peatland store carbon.
