The outcome of COP26 – what does it mean for geoscience?

Flo Bullough and Megan O’Donnell share their reflections on the second week of international negotiations at the 26th UN Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow.

The second week of the long-awaited 2021 UN climate conference has culminated in the announcement of the Glasgow Climate Pact. This international agreement strengthens global ambitions to mitigate the effects and impacts of climate change.

Perhaps most importantly, and for the first time in three decades of UN climate summits, a global commitment to ‘phase down’ the use of unabated coal for power was agreed. Alongside formally agreeing to the cessation of ‘inefficient’ fossil fuel subsidies, this marks an important and historical step-change, with the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuel industry.

While finance targets were regrettably not met by the time leaders convened at this COP, the Glasgow Climate Pact sets out ambitions to rectify this, specifically to limit loss and damage from climate impacts and to support nations as needed with adaptation.

Another landmark success of COP26 was the resolution reached on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Article 6 governs the ‘accounting’ of global carbon emissions, and if agreed incorrectly, would render much of the Paris Agreement ineffective at limiting the damaging effects of climate change.

Have agreements made at COP26 brought the world in line with the aims of the Paris Agreement?

The major impacts of climate change in a world warmed by 2°C are now well understood; sea levels will rise, extreme weather will become intense and frequent, ocean chemistry will change affecting marine life, air quality will decrease, and food security will be impacted. One of the major ambitions of the Paris Agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2°C (ideally to 1.5°C) in order to avoid the most catastrophic and dangerous of these impacts – however before COP26 the world was still far short of the mitigation and emissions reductions needed to keep global temperatures at or near 2°C.

In practice, the Paris Agreement works by requiring countries to declare actions they will take to limit their greenhouse gas emissions every five years. These collective declarations are called NDCs or nationally determined contributions, and reflect global commitments to limit the effects of climate change as well as building resilience to its impacts. The Carbon Brief has calculated that if all countries met their latest NDCs then warming is predicted to reach between 1.8°C – 3.3°C by 2100. This could be further minimised if nations were to achieve their Net Zero pledges (1.4°C – 2.6°C). In addition, several non-obligatory commitments made during COP26 such as the Global Methane Pledge, the Powering Past Coal Alliance and numerous Net Zero promises could prevent as much as 0.1°C of additional warming if implemented in full.

Although decimals of a degree may not seem like much, it is worth noting that without the COP mechanism, global emissions reduction targets would not be obligatory and we would most likely still be on a path to warm the planet by up to 4°C by 2100 with dangerous and life threatening implications. Progress made at this COP to encourage counties to refresh their NDCs on a more frequent timescale will also increase pressure on many to make continued increases to pledged emissions cuts.