COP26 and UN Climate Talks 

by Helen Gloege ’23 

Alok Sharma was appointed President of this year’s Conference of the Parties on Thursday, Feb. 13. COP26 will take place in Glasgow, Scotland from Nov. 9 to 19. The meeting aims to assess progress in dealing with climate change has been meeting since 1994. While this year’s conference will be sponsored by the United Kingdom, leadership will assume the Presidency in partnership with Italy. Before the conference, a Youth Event and Pre-COP Summit will be held in Milan, Italy, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 12. 

The pairing of the countries is due to their common goals to phase out coal power by 2025, have net zero emissions by 2050 and speed up transition to low emission vehicles. Glasgow was selected as the host location  because of its global presence, accessibility and experience hosting large international events. The conference will be held in the Scottish Event Campus and will be the biggest international summit the UK has ever hosted, with an expected number of over 30,000 delegates, including heads of state, climate experts and campaigners. 

Sharma, a member of the Conservative Party, previously served as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He was previously Secretary of State for International Development, served as Housing minister (2017-2018) and Employment Minister (2018-2019). He replaced former UK Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, Claire Perry O’Neill, who was originally appointed the role but was removed by Prime Minister Borris Johnson earlier this month. 

This will be the twenty-sixth COP conference, the sixteenth for parties in the Kyoto Protocol and the third meeting for the Paris Agreement. 

The Kyoto Protocol commits state parties to reducing greenhouse gas emissions based on scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is caused by humans. The protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997 and came into effect on February 16, 2005. Currently, there are 192 parties in the protocol. The goal was to reduce the onset of global warming and applied specifically to six greenhouse gases, including Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide, Hydrofluorocarbons, Perfluorocarbons and Sulphur hexafluoride. The first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012,with thirty-six countries participating. Nine of those countries weren’t fully able to reach their goals. 

Similar to the Kyoto Protocol is the more well known Paris Agreement, created during COP21 in 2016, which aims to deal with greenhouse-gas emissions, mitigation, adaptation and finance. As of November 2019, all UNFCCC members had signed the agreement. Nov. 4 of this year is the first effective withdrawal date from the agreement. The purpose of the agreement is to prevent global average temperature increase below two degrees Celsius, and to aim for roughly a 1.5 degree increase. Each country involved has to determine, plan and regularly report on their contribution to combating climate change.