COP26 ends: Key takeaways from the biggest global climate summit so far

COP26 President Alok Sharma gestures as he receives applause during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, on November 13, 2021. (Source: Reuters)

The COP26 Summit in Glasgow, as the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties held in the United Kingdom is known, has ended after two weeks. In what was one of the most followed yet contentious such meets till now, the Glasgow summit had sought stricter commitments from nations to check climate change, building on their pledges in Paris six years ago.

The final outcome, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, reaffirms the devastating impact of an increase of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius in the global temperature on humanity and the planet. But the participants stumbled on the measures needed to reach the goal of containing the rise in temperature.

Instead, the pact calls on 197 countries to report their progress towards more climate targets next year, at COP27, set to take place in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. As a result, experts say that despite high ambitions, the text of the final agreement has barely managed to hold on to previous commitments. Senior United Nations officials have said this constitutes “the least worst outcome” as no country has left the summit fuming, nor happy.

One of the iconic images of the summit was COP26 president and British cabinet minister Alok Sharma struggling to hold back tears following the adoption of the final agreement, which has been widely reported as a compromise deal. The Indian-origin minister had repeatedly warned that despite agreeing on the target, countries were struggling to reach them.

Moneycontrol takes a look at the steps taken to move forward and hurdles that couldn't be scaled:

Cutting carbon emissions

While in principle almost all countries have committed to reduce emissions, they could not agree on the key contributors towards emissions, oil and gas, and coal.

One of the landmark features of the draft agreement at Glasgow had been a promise to completely phase out the use of coal power and inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels. However, the final text was revised to read just “phase down” owing to a last-minute amendment jointly proposed by India and China.

While this was the first time the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels was explicitly mentioned in COP texts, both the developed world and least developed countries have been disappointed with the final agreement.

The summit also managed to agree on other significant contentious issues on its agenda, including how countries report their emissions and rules for global carbon markets.

Climate finance

Even before delegates reached Glasgow, climate experts had stressed that the question of who will provide the promised $100 billion in annual climate finance and how would be the biggest issue at the summit. The Glasgow meet began with the stated intention by all parties to find out how much money should be committed.

All nations now agree that upwards of $1 trillion—not the $100 billion estimated in 2008—would be required annually to help poorer nations mitigate and adapt to climate change-led extreme weather events.

But as the richest economies could not come to an agreement of who will foot the bill and even when the assistance will begin flowing, the topic of climate finance has remained inconclusive. The deal, however, asks rich countries to “at least double” by 2025 the sums they give to developing counties to help them adapt to climate change from 2019 levels.

This was pointed to by India and China during their opposition to the COP plan to phase out coal power. Sources say that both nations, backed by other developing countries like South Africa and Indonesia, had argued that they can't promise to phase out coal power in the absence of the promised finance required to invest in renewable energy.

Much of the developing world remains nominally poor, under-industrialised and with a young population. Unlike their richer counterparts with older populations such as Japan, the UK and US, countries across Africa and Asia have said they need to be provided with financial assistance from those who have till now pumped in carbon into the atmosphere.

National commitments

The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) are non-binding national plans highlighting climate actions, including climate-related targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions, policies and measures to achieve the global targets set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

The COP26 deal has promised to update the timeframe for revised targets for countries to the end of next year—much earlier than the requirement of every five years, as laid out in the Paris accord. Back then, India had pledged to improve the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33-35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, increase the share of non-fossil fuel-based electricity to 40 percent by 2030, and enhance its forest cover to absorb 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030.

This has been updated at the Glasgow summit with India promising to increase installed renewable capacity to 500 GW, meet 50 percent of its energy requirements from non-fossil fuel sources, and bring down the carbon emissions intensity of the economy by 45 per cent from 2005 levels.

Multinational efforts

Widely considered to be the highlight in progress of this COP, major multilateral initiatives by large economic powers such as the UK, the European Union, China and the US have taken centre stage.

Till now, there have been four major commitments. These include a global clean-coal initiative by 40 countries and scores of major businesses to end all investments in new coal power generation domestically and internationally, and a pledge by more than 100 countries to cut methane emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.

Led by the UK, more than 100 nations have also sought to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade. This includes Canada, Russia, Congo, Indonesia and Brazil, which account for 85 percent of the global forest cover.