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Climate and Environment

COP26 climate summit draft reveals which fights remain

The provisional draft accelerates how often countries would need to ramp up emissions-reduction targets and makes direct reference to phasing out coal

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Updated November 10, 2021 at 6:58 a.m. EST|Published November 9, 2021 at 6:01 p.m. EST
Climate activists demonstrate outside the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. (Robert Perry/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
6 min

GLASGOW, Scotland — COP26 organizers released a preliminary draft early Wednesday of an agreement on how countries will work together to curb climate change. The language will evolve over the course of the final days of the conference, and it contains several provisions that are likely to be contentious.

  • The draft seeks to speed up emissions cuts. Noting that current national pledges are insufficient to avert catastrophic warming, the draft urges countries to update their formal carbon-cutting goals before the end of 2022 — especially those countries that have not adopted more ambitious targets since the Paris agreement was signed six years ago.
  • The text calls on participants in the agreement to phase out coal and subsidies for fossil fuels. Neither “coal” nor “fossil fuels” more generally were mentioned in the landmark Paris agreement.
  • The draft “reaffirms” the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursuing a target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, but it does not commit to meeting the 1.5 threshold — which scientists and vulnerable countries increasingly say the world cannot afford to miss.
  • The draft calls for developed countries to boost their aid to lower-income nations, including doubling funds to help with adaptation and providing “enhanced and additional support” for addressing the irreversible impacts of climate change, known as loss and damage. But it does not mention a clear financial mechanism for addressing loss and damage, nor does it offer details on what support rich nations would be expected to deliver beyond 2025.
  • The draft text only includes “placeholder” paragraphs for one of the thorniest issues being discussed: rules for measuring and reporting countries’ emissions back to the United Nations.
  • The text doesn’t mention the contentious “Article 6″ of the Paris agreement, which would establish the rules for a global market for buying and selling carbon.

The draft represents an opening bid of sorts. Some parts may come out, while some text may be added. The negotiators are arguing about the particulars of the language. But the arguments also reflect different ideas about how — and how aggressively — to address climate change.