World governments meet nearly every year to talk about the alarmingly changing climate and its emergency.
In these meetings, they discuss how to keep the temperatures lower than the hazardous levels and how these climate crises can be prevented from resulting in catastrophes around the world, especially for vulnerable and poorer countries.
This brings us to the term given to this meeting, the COP. If you have heard about it but are not sure what it is, then you have come to the right place. Continue reading to find out all about it.
What is COP26?
COP stands for Conference of the Parties, and it is conducted under the UNFCCC, which stands for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
After the meeting was postponed for a year due to the pandemic, it was conducted in its 26th session.
The Glasgow Climate Pact is the new global agreement that was reached at the COP26 session. This pact aims to reduce the impacts of the climate crisis.
What was in the COP26 agreement?
Even though the agreement is not legally binding, it sets out the global agenda for the decades to come.
Emissions
In the meeting, it was pledged to keep the temperature rises below 1.5C, which is needed to prevent a catastrophe. But this will only reduce global warming by 2.4C.
So it was agreed to meet at the next summit to pledge further reduction in the emissions of carbon dioxide.
Coal
Coal is responsible for 40% of the CO2 emissions annually. So for the first time, it was agreed to reduce the use of coal.
Methane
Methane is a huge contributor to human-generated global warming. More than 100 countries agreed to cut methane emissions by 30% by the year 2030.
Fossil fuel
World governments agreed to discontinue the assistance and aid that artificially decreased the cost of oil, natural gas, or coal.
Trees
World government leaders, with around 85% of the world’s forests, pledged to stop deforestation by the year 2030 and thus reduce CO2.
Developing countries
At the summit, it was also pledged to increase the money to poor countries to help them tackle the effects of the climate crisis and to allow them to switch to cleaner energy sources.
There is also a chance of a trillion-dollar fund annually from 2025 after the previous pledge of providing 100 billion dollars annually by 2020 was not fulfilled.
US and china agreement
Two of the largest CO2 emitters agreed to cooperate to tackle the climate crisis in areas like switching to cleaner energy and reducing methane emissions.
Money
Financial corporations that control 130 trillion dollars money agreed to back the technology for renewable energy and move finances away from the fossil fuel industry. This initiative will include private businesses in achieving net-zero.
Why was it necessary?
The COP26 meeting is important like any other COP meeting because of the increasing temperatures around the globe.
In this meeting, the world governments show how they are going to tackle the issue of temperature rise and keep it below 1.5C while also promising money to countries that are most affected by the climate crisis and abandoning the use of fossil fuels.
COP26 was a meeting where the countries came together to revisit the climate pledges they made under the Paris Agreement in 2015.
At that time, the countries made an agreement to make the required changes to keep global warming below 2C while aiming for 1.5C.
So the COP26 was the 26th annual session conducted in Glasgow after the advent of the pandemic in 2021.
In this summit, 200 countries participated and pledged to reduce emissions by 2030. The main aim is to reduce emissions until a net-zero level is achieved.
How does it affect you?
These conferences affect you because the decisions made in the meeting form the basis of a new policy for governments, which obviously changes a lot of things and affects your monthly Utility Bidder bill.
Since the climate crisis affects every one of us living on the planet, we need to work together to tackle the issue.
Conclusion
Since the conference and the agreements are not binding legally, the countries who made the pledges at the COP26 will have to implement them on a self-policing basis.