Glasgow Climate Pact receives cautious welcome as climate commitments are watered down
Europe’s political leaders have offered lukewarm praise for the outcomes of the COP26 UN climate change conference, which drew to a close in Glasgow, Scotland, on 13 November—a day later than expected—with the signing of the Glasgow Climate Pact.
Coming on top of more focused side-deals secured at the summit, the pact reaffirmed a goal to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and recognised the importance of science to these efforts. But it was watered down at the last minute to include a commitment to phase down the burning of coal, rather than phasing it out completely, following objections from China and India.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said COP26 provided a “step in the right direction” on combating climate change, but that “the work is far from done”.
More to do
Von der Leyen said progress had been made on all three of the EU’s targets for the summit: to achieve commitments to start cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the current decade, to devote $100 billion (€114bn) annually to helping poorer countries and to agree on rules for implementing the landmark climate deal reached at COP21 in Paris in 2015.
The Glasgow Climate Pact calls on the research community to “further the understanding of global, regional and local impacts of climate change, response options and adaptation needs”. It is the first climate deal to explicitly plan to reduce the use of coal, but the pledges it contains do not go far enough to limit the temperature rise to the 1.5C as pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“The least we can do now is implement the promises of Glasgow as rapidly as possible and then aim higher,” von der Leyen said. “If all long-term commitments announced in Glasgow will be implemented, we should keep global warming under 2C.”
The European Parliament president David Sassoli said the outcomes of the summit were “not perfect”, but that the summit kept alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C. “Now, promises must be kept and commitments delivered on quickly. The fight against climate change cannot suffer any further delay,” he said.
But MEP Nils Torvalds, coordinator for the liberal Renew Europe group on the Parliament environment committee, lamented “the unwillingness of China and India to phase out coal”. He added: “Countries unwilling to make the necessary transition have to understand that they took the wrong turn in Glasgow.”
MEP Jytte Guteland, environment committee coordinator for the centre-left Socialists and Democrats group, described the deal as a “timid” step forward. “We cannot help but remark on the shortfalls and the several important steps that still remain to be taken,” she added, calling on China to commit to phasing out coal power and India to reach net zero carbon emissions “long before 2070”, its current timescale.
All countries will return to the negotiating table at the next COP conference in Egypt next year, where they will re-examine their national plans.