Does the Glasgow Climate Pact actually have the potential to change anything?
Ever since 1995, the United Nations is gathering representatives from countries all around the globe in annual global climate summits, or Conferences of the Parties. Throughout these three decades, the significance of climate change has risen incredibly fast: as its grim consequences have become more and more damaging, the debates on the topic have become more and more intense
Overshadowed by the historic success (a momentous one at best) of COP21, which resulted in the Paris Agreement, the Glassgow COP26 took place with a one-year pandemic-related delay. The expectations set for the climate negotiations were relatively high, especially considering the common occurrence of government officials who are highly reluctant to the concept of climate change itself, let alone the need to act against it. Nevertheless, the four official main targets for the Conference sounded promising and seemed to acknowledge the urgency of the issue to a reasonable extent: keeping emission reduction targets within reach, building defenses to protect lives and ecosystems, mobilising financial resources, and accelerating the action to tackle the crisis.
After two weeks of heated debates, more than 190 countries have signed off on The Glasgow Climate Pact. But can this be considered an achievement, an actual step forward, rather than just another bunch of official documents? The answer to this question is tremendously complex. Antonio Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations publicly declares “It is an important step but is not enough. We must accelerate climate action to keep alive the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees[...] we have some building blocks for progress”.
Whether participating countries are going to keep their recently made promises about limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by phasing out coal, eliminating petrol and diesel cars, reducing methane emissions and many others remains to be seen. However, the general public attitude remains skeptical, with the majority of informed individuals finding the measures agreed upon insufficient and superficial, especially in regard to supporting the most affected areas.
Even though we still don’t know if we are actually doing better than we were two weeks ago, even the smallest win matters in the seemingly neverending, straining fight to protect ecosystems, and ultimately, humanity.
Miruna Nicolae
17.11.2021
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