COP26 stands for “Conference of the Parties,” and it is the twenty-sixth meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. It will take place November 1–12 in Glasgow, Scotland, and will be attended by the countries (the “parties”) that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Hosted by the United Kingdom partnering with Italy, COP26 will be the biggest summit that the U.K. has ever held. As many as 30,000 people are expected to attend. Many see this summit as the most significant climate event since the 2015 Paris Agreement, when all the signatories to the UNFCCC agreed to keep temperatures well below “2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Status Critical

COP26 is critical because it is the first moment when countries must set out more ambitious goals than those stated in the Paris Agreement. Many consider it the world’s last best chance to get runaway climate change under control. Something momentous happened in Paris in 2015 during COP21, when, for the first time, almost all the world’s nations agreed to work together to limit global warming. Countries committed to national plans stating how much they would reduce emissions.

Glasgow is the moment for countries to update their plans. The commitments laid out in Paris did not come close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, and the window for achieving this goal is closing. President Joe Biden plans to attend, along with Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, who will lead ten other U.S. delegates. The heads of China and India have not committed to being present.

The League’s Role

Also attending are our own LWVUS representative to the Observer Corps, Robin Tokmakian, and Lora Lucero of LWV New Mexico, a member of the LWVUS Climate Action Plans team, which our own NRC member Kathy Berlin chairs.

—Julie Parker, Natural Resources Committee