The United Nations climate summit, from which firm commitments must emerge to achieve compliance with the Paris Agreement and reduce emissions globally, has its formal beginning today in Glasgow, Scotland.
Decisive, ambition and risk these are ideas that have dominated political and public discourse about the summit, when many countries, including some of the biggest polluters, have not yet presented goals ambitious emissions reductions, energy transition away from fossil fuels and poorest countries in adapting to climate change.
These are some of the main objectives of the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, summarized in the designation COP26, which the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, acknowledged that he is in “serious risk” to fail.
The summit, which runs until 12 November, starts today with preliminary plenary meetings that will bring together representatives of the signatory countries of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement on emission reduction of greenhouse gases.
The official opening ceremony takes place on Monday, with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, host country, together with Italy, with “creative and cultural moments”, according to the organization.
The summit of heads of state and government, which until Tuesday will make interventions explaining their commitments and renewed ambitions to give substance to the Paris Agreement and limit global warming until the end of the century.
Also on Monday, world leaders will listen to scientists to describe the state of the art in climate issues and outline the scenario that awaits the world if the goals set in 2015 in Paris are not met yet more ambition and speed.
The declarations on the first day will take place in two plenary rooms at the same time, one with heads of state, the other with prime ministers, in a parade of world leaders that will include the US President, Joe Biden, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The statements by the heads of state and government will continue on Tuesday and the following days will be organized by themes: finance on Wednesday, Energy on Thursday, Youth on Friday.
On Saturday, the day that COP26 devotes itself to the theme of Nature and Land Use, Glasgow is scheduled to host a demonstration of climate activists, convened by the Coligação COP26 collective and marked by the organization’s pessimism about the chances of the summit bringing some change that really results.
Over the two weeks of COP26, this coalition promotes its own “alternative summit”, with debates, meetings and protest initiatives.
The thematic days at the summit continue into the second week until the end of the negotiations, whose tradition is to extend until the end of
