After 2 weeks of intense negotiations and a day of overtime, the 197 countries represented in Glasgow for the 26th session of the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26) finally managed to reach a compromise on the evening of Saturday 13 November, at the cost of last-minute changes that weakened the text compared to its previous versions.
The President of COP26, Alok Sharma, apologised for these changes with tears in his eyes during the plenary session closing the conference.
“May I just say to all delegates that I apologise for the way this process has unfolded and that I am deeply sorry”, he declared, all the while saying “I understand the deep disappointment” of some parties and observers.
A weakened text
The first version of the text presented by Mr Sharma’s team on Wednesday 10 November seemed ambitious in some respects. In particular, the text called on the parties to “accelerate the phase out of coal and fossil fuel subsidies”, but did not specify a deadline (see EUROPE 12830/4).
While a reference to fossil fuels still appears in the final text - a first for a COP text - the wording was significantly weakened under pressure from some countries, in particular China and India.
Called the Glasgow Climate Pact, the final compromise now calls on the parties to accelerate efforts to “phase down” “unabated” coal-fired electricity (i.e. not coupled with CO2 capture and storage technologies) and “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies, without defining what constitutes efficiency.
In an interview with C4 News after the COP, Alok Sharma acknowledged that China and India had threatened to derail the whole process if the term ‘phase out’ was not replaced by ‘phase-down’.
Is the 1.5°C target still within reach?
Despite this last-minute change, Mr Sharma described the Glasgow Pact as “historic”.
In particular, he welcomed the agreed text on the climate change mitigation targets in the Paris Agreement, namely to keep average global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to aim for 1.5°C.
The final text ‘requests’ the parties at COP26 to ‘review’ and ‘strengthen’, if necessary, their 2030 climate targets - known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) - by the end of 2022, or 3 years before the targeted date set out by the Paris Agreement.
It should be noted that this section has also been slightly weakened compared to the previous version, which ‘urges’ the parties to strengthen their NDCs. According to UN rules, the term ‘request’ is in fact weaker than ‘urge’.
The pact also recalls the commitment of the parties to continue their efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C, stressing that the impacts of climate change will be “much lower” at +1.5°C than at +2°C.
It also provides for a “high-level ministerial round table” to review pre-2030 progress each year from November 2022, as well as for a leaders’ summit in 2023.
For the post-2030 period, the text urges parties that have not yet done so to communicate, by November 2022, “long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies” with a view to achieving net zero emissions around 2050.
For the President of the COP, all these elements allow him to say “with credibility” that “we have kept 1.5 degrees within reach”. “But its pulse is weak”, he then warned. He added: “(The Pact) will only survive if we (...) translate commitments into rapid action”.
Sharing this analysis, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that COP26 represents “a step in the right direction”, even if “the work is far from done”.
The same rings true for Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice-President in charge of the Green Deal. At Glasgow to lead the negotiations on behalf of the EU, he said: “It is my firm belief that the text that has been agreed reflects a balance of the interests of all Parties, and allows us to act with the urgency that is essential for our survival.
Many civil society organisations, however, criticised the lack of ambition of the Pact, as did representatives of the least developed countries.
In a statement issued on 14 November (https://bit.ly/3Hyzk3w ), they called for an increase in ambition until the 2030 deficit is closed.
And to add: “We have to acknowledge the final decision is far from enough to match the scale of the crisis and to meet the needs of our countries.
According to the scientific institute Climate Action Tracker, the current targets set for 2030 (without the commitments for around 2050) put the planet on track for a temperature increase of 2.4°C by the end of the century, well above the 1.5 degree target of the Paris Agreement.
This figure could fall to 1.8°C in a very optimistic scenario, i.e. if all countries’ commitments to achieve zero net emissions and all targets under discussion are implemented.
“Even with all new Glasgow pledges for 2030, we will emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as is required for 1.5°C”, says the Climate Action Tracker analysis.
Climate finance gap persists
Another major issue at COP26 was the question of climate finance, i.e. the funds mobilised by developed countries to help developing countries cope with climate change.
While developed countries had pledged to provide $100 billion per year starting in 2020 and until 2025, this target is not expected to be met until 2023, despite new pledges of funding announced by some countries at the COP.
In response to this shortfall, the text urges developed countries “to at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation” by 2025 compared to 2019 levels.
The parties to the COP also committed to a process to agree on long-term climate finance beyond 2025.
No funds for loss and damage
Despite their efforts, vulnerable countries and NGOs also failed to secure the establishment of a loss and damage fund, mainly due to the refusal of the US.
Such a fund, financed by rich countries, would be used to compensate vulnerable countries for losses and damage caused by climate change.
In the face of opposition from the US, but also from the EU, vulnerable countries nevertheless managed to secure a section on loss and damage in the Glasgow Pact, a first for this kind of text.
In particular, it calls for a “dialogue” between relevant parties, organisations and stakeholders to “discuss the arrangements for the funding of activities to avert, minimize and address loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change”.
The text also urges developed countries to provide increased and additional support for loss and damage activities and states that the ‘Santiago Network’ - a body aimed at developing technical expertise in loss and damage management - will receive funding.
Finalisation of the Paris Agreement rules
According to Alok Sharma, another element that explains the “historic” nature of the Glasgow pact is the emergence of a consensus on a “rulebook” set out in the Paris Agreement , a point on which the parties had not managed to agree at COP25 in Madrid.
These rules relate to transparency requirements and reporting on countries’ progress towards their NDCs, but also to the functioning of international carbon markets.
This is the famous Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which provides a framework for trading carbon credits between parties.
This system aims to allow a country that fails to meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to compensate for its poor record by buying credits sold by other countries.
In other words, a country could account for an emission reduction achieved in another country by buying it from the latter, for example by financing the restoration of a forest there.
One of the issues at stake in Glasgow was to avoid the risk of double counting, i.e. the fact that the reduction of one and the same tonne of CO2 is counted twice, by the buying country and by the selling country.
In the final text, this risk seems to be reduced, as it specifies that “corresponding adjustments” will apply to all credits.
This means that countries have agreed to correct their final emission levels for the carbon credit units they allow, says Carbon Market Watch.
According to the organisation, “careful scrutiny” will nevertheless be required to “ensure that companies do not exploit the very highly technical and unclear language included in the text”.
The NGO regrets, on the other hand, the agreement reached on the old carbon credits put into circulation via the ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ (CDM) established by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Depending on the compromise reached, the credits registered from 2013 onwards, or around 300 million credits, will probably be able to be transferred to the new market established by the Paris Agreement, explains Carbon Market Watch.
For the NGO, these old credits should be abolished, as they “are of poor quality, lack environmental integrity” and that “most of the projects they financed would have happened anyway”.
The agreement also provides for a mandatory cancellation of 2% of traded credits to reduce supply, with an exemption for bilateral trades negotiated between countries under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement.
A predictable result?
In the end, the outcome of COP26 did not seem to convince many people, not even its president, reflecting the difficulty of reaching an ambitious agreement between nearly 200 countries with diverse interests.
This difficulty was also expressed by Frans Timmermans after the COP. Asked by a journalist about the last-minute weakening of the text, he replied: “What is the alternative? That we say no to this and that we have no agreement at all? No. Sometimes in politics, what is perfect is the enemy of what’s good.
Pascal Canfin, Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment (ENVI) and leader of the MEPs’ delegation to Glasgow, said, “we must admit that the deal is based on the lowest common denominator”. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)