COP26 begins with goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C

The 26th United Nations Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP26), delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, started on Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland.

As the first conference after the five-year review cycle under the Paris Agreement inked in 2015, delegates are expected to review overall progress and plan future actions on climate change in the coming two weeks.

The conference comes at a time when the world has gone through a series of climate-change-related weather disasters, from severe flooding to wildfires.

Issues high on the agenda include finalizing the rules for the Paris Agreement’s market mechanism and wealthy countries’ unmet finance pledge to the developing countries to help them tackle climate-related challenges.

In his speech at the opening ceremony, COP26 president, Alok Sharma said: “We postponed COP26 by a year. But during that year, climate change did not take time off…And we know that the window to keep 1.5 degrees within reach is closing.”

“We know that our shared planet is changing for the worse. And we can only address that together, through this international system…And if we act now, and we act together, we can protect our precious planet,” he added. He told Sky News television, “We’re already at global warming at 1.1 degrees above pre-industrial levels. At 1.5 there are countries in the world that will be underwater, and that’s why we need to get an agreement here on how we tackle climate change over the next decade.”

The Paris conference had agreed to the 1.5 C goal in 2015.

In fact at the G20 summit in Rome, leaders of the Group of 20 major economies in their final statement on Sunday promised to take “meaningful and effective” action to limit global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The two-week long conference began with a minute’s silence for those who died in the Covid-19 pandemic.

In her opening address, Patricia Espinosa, who is Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, callaed for the fulfilling of the goal of limiting the rise of global temperature to 1.5 C. “We stand at a pivotal point in history. Humanity faces several stark but clear choices. We either choose to achieve rapid and large-scale reductions of emissions to keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C— or we accept that humanity faces a bleak future on this planet,” she said.

“We either choose to boost adaptation efforts to deal with current extreme weather disasters and build resilience to address future impacts—or we accept that more people will die, more families will suffer, and more economic harm will follow,” she added.

“Success at #COP26 is entirely possible. Success is possible because we have the platform for action. The Paris Agreement is a covenant of hope with humanity,” she said.