Delegates at high-stakes COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, agreed Saturday on a global deal to boost climate action after last-minute wrangling. They also approved rules that would create the framework for a global carbon market.
The final version of the broad document, named the Glasgow Climate Pact, kept contentious proposals despite last-minute pushback from China and India — two of the world’s biggest emitters. That included language on reducing coal and fossil-fuel subsidies and coming back by next year with new climate targets. The proposals passed after an eleventh-hour watering down, negotiated in plain sight in the plenary room.
They also agreed to a set of sweeping rules on international carbon trading. Negotiators reached compromises on issues including how to avoid double-counting of credits and how to make sure a share of proceeds goes to helping poor nations adapt to a warming planet. Still, activists warned that those concessions could set back efforts to cut heat-trapping emissions.
Experts expressed cautious optimism that the measures would keep alive the Paris Agreement’s stretch goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. But environmentalists maintained their criticism over the lack of finance commitments from rich countries, who are under pressure to do more to help developing nations decarbonize and deal with more extreme weather events.
Negotiators reached compromises on carbon-related issues including how to avoid double-counting of credits and how to make sure a share of proceeds goes to helping poor nations adapt to a warming planet. Still, activists warned that those concessions could set back efforts to cut heat-trapping emissions.
In a last-minute move, India proposed weakening fossil fuel language in the pact, shifting from a commitment toward “accelerating efforts towards the phase-out of unabated coal power” to instead supporting a “phase down unabated coal power.”
Switzerland and the European Union expressed strong objections to India’s proposal, but ultimately accepted it, paving the way for the adoption of what EU climate czar Frans Timmermans called a “historic” document.
Lines on ending inefficient subsidies on fossil fuels and phasing out unabated coal survived for another draft of the COP26 agreement. The final draft also still asks countries to upgrade their climate targets next year.
The European Union’s climate chief Frans Timmermans implored nations to accept the draft text as written, saying that they shouldn’t “kill this moment.”
“I wonder if we’re not at risk of stumbling in this marathon a couple of meters before reaching the finish line,” he said. Our children and grandchildren “will not forgive us if we fail them today,” he said to loud applause in the auditorium.
