Relief and frustration as climate deal is done

The sweat was beading on COP26 president Alok Sharma’s forehead after lastminute word changes insisted on by India and China, but nearly 200 countries agreed to a climate deal that will help the world avoid the worst impacts of global warming, although it stopped short of reaching the goals of the Paris climate accord. At a time of mounting public frustration over the warming planet — with protesters outside the venue every day — the gathering in Glasgow at times appeared to teeter on the brink of collapse as countries clashed over the use of fossil fuels and the creation of new carbon markets, as well as damage payments from rich countries to poor ones. They succeeded finally in overcoming their differences to agree on the rules for the 2015 Paris climate accord, which will enable the pact to become operational, for example with standards on how countries report their emissions. But they still are not planning to cut emissions quickly enough to reach the temperature goals of the Paris accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C since preindustrial times, and ideally around 1.5C. Temperatures have already risen 1.1C over that period. Professor Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research in Germany, said the summit was a “step forward” nonetheless. It helped to shift the world’s trajectory from around 2.7C of expected warming, to around 1.8C or 1.9C, if all the national net zero targets were achieved, he told the FT. “This is probably the COP meeting, after Paris, that has been most constructive,” said Rockstrom, pointing to the rule book and to the inclusion of “real world” pacts on the sidelines of the summit. “On the other hand, as a scientist, I’m also disappointed. We came to Glasgow knowing the science, and every nation had to align to get to 1.5C, and we didn’t get to that.” The two-week summit, attended by more than 30,000 people from all over the world, was the biggest diplomatic event since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. As around 120 national leaders including US President Joe Biden descended on Glasgow during the opening days, the first week was marked by leader speeches, pledges and side deals. The most significant of these was the US-led “Methane Pledge”, as more than 100 countries promised to cut emissions of methane, a potent warming gas. But the critical technical negotiations became heated during the second week of the summit. For years the countries that signed the Paris accord have disagreed about how they should implement it, and failed to agree on those rules at previous COPs. As the mood darkened during week two, some participants questioned whether the Glasgow COP might turn out to be similar to the failed Copenhagen summit in 2009. Nations found themselves rehashing old disputes, for example about whether rich and poor countries should report emissions in the same way. Signs of a breakthrough came on Wednesday evening, when the US and China signalled their intent to support a final deal as their respective envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, joined forces with a joint declaration. China’s role was under scrutiny at the COP, after President Xi Jinping failed to join the other world leaders for the opening, having not left Beijing since before the pandemic. And in the final minutes of the summit on Saturday evening, India and China staged a dramatic intervention to weaken the language on coal and fossil fuels. A compromise was reached on a pledge to phase “down” rather than phase “out” coal, although many small island states were bitterly unhappy with the change. The US defended the change on coal language as a necessary part of getting the deal done. Given the obstacles of the pandemic and heightened geopolitical tensions, the summit was at times not expected to take place at all, after being delayed from 2020. Laurence Tubiana, chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, and a key architect of the 2015 Paris pact, said the COP26 summit represented a “step forward”. Having the “rule book” for the Paris climate accord finally agreed was “particularly positive” she said, so that the pact could be implemented. As the summit concluded, several vulnerable and small island nations expressed “profound disappointment”. Aminath Shauna, environment minister of the low-lying Maldives, said the deal did not “bring hope”, adding: “We have 98 months to half global emissions. The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us.”