Tackling climate change: Why COP26 UN Climate Change Conference is important and what it entails

COP26 climate conference: The COP26 UN Climate Change Conference is set to be held from October 31 to November 12 this year, with the UK being the host. During the conference, leaders from over 190 countries would come together, along with citizens, researchers and negotiators, and all of them would try to create a strong global response to climate change and the threats it poses, according to a report in IE. The conference is being viewed as an important step towards the acceleration of the climate action plan.

2021 marks the 26th Conference of Parties, and hence, has been named the COP26. It will be conducted at Glasgow’s Scottish Event Campus. This conference holds all the more importance in light of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC’s assessment report that came out a few months ago. It had pointed out the possibility of droughts, extreme rainfall, rising sea levels and heat waves that the Earth can experience in the coming decades.

The COP is under the UNFCCC or the United Nations Climate Change Framework Convention, which had been adopted by the countries in 1992. It had been formed to work towards stabilising the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As per the UNFCCC, the member states were required to formulate measures that would help mitigate climate change. Member states were also required to cooperate in preparations for adaptation to climate change impact, and they also needed to promote public awareness, training and education in this aspect.

Since 1995, the COP members have had a meeting every year, and the 198 parties that form the COP include the US, India and China. India was the host of COP8 in 2002 between October 23 and November 1.

One of the most important conferences is deemed to be the COP21 that was held in Paris, France in 2015, during which the member countries had agreed that they would work in tandem with each other to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The COP26 has four goals that the member states would work towards. The first of these is to achieve global net-zero by the middle of the century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach. The second goal is for the member states to adapt to protect communities as well as natural habitats from the impact of climate change.

COP26 aims to keep the third goal as mobilisation of finances, while the fourth goal is for the member states to work together so that they list out the rules in detail that would help in fulfilment of the Paris agreement.