Glasgow pact

The COP26 climate summit closed with nearly 200 countries signing the Glasgow Climate Pact. There was intense wrangling over some of the conditions, which led the signing to be delayed a day and left some climate change experts and activists disappointed, though most political leaders and government experts around the world insisted that the deal was probably as good as could be. Ahead of the summit, one of the main goals was for countries to agree on ways to keep the global temperature increase since the industrial revolution under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Experts said the conditions of the Glasgow pact do not go far enough to keep that from happening, though political leaders were more optimistic. The fact is that the pact only “resolves to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius”.

The UK president for COP26 noted that while the deal has “kept 1.5 degrees alive... its pulse is weak and it will only survive if we keep our promises and translate commitments into rapid action”. One of the best illustrations of this is the disagreement over coal. The pact calls on countries to “accelerate ... efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power”. This was a compromise forced primarily by India, which did not want any language calling for phasing out coal, which is responsible for almost half of all manmade carbon emissions. While developing countries do deserve some relaxation relative to rich ones in transitioning to green power, New Delhi’s last-minute demand — and recent actions — went far beyond this.

Meanwhile, after rich countries miserably failed to meet their 2009 pledge to provide $100 billion for climate adaption assistance to developing countries by 2020, the new pact calls on developed nations to transparently and “fully deliver” on this pledge by 2025. Still, despite the watered-down language, the Glasgow pact has bought the world some time to come up with more concrete five-year plans in time for next year’s COP27 in Egypt.