UN chief says COP26 climate agreement is not enough News
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UN chief says COP26 climate agreement is not enough

A UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) climate agreement was reached Saturday in Glasgow after negotiations were extended an extra day. The agreement was adopted after nearly 200 countries met in Scotland. However, UN Secretary-General António Guterres says the compromise deal is not enough.

Going into COP26, there were high hopes that the meeting would result in meaningful action. The UN’s climate science report had recently sounded the alarm that climate change was happening faster than even scientists had previously understood.

The outcome document, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, calls on 197 countries to report their progress towards more climate ambition next year, at COP27, which is set to take place in Egypt. Therefore, whether the Glasgow pact is successful will ultimately depend on whether countries come to COP27 next year with more ambitious commitments to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Guterres stated in a video statement released at the close of the two-week meeting: “[I]t 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.” He highlighted that it is time to end fossil fuel subsidies, phase out coal and put a price on carbon, which he stated were goals that were not achieved at the conference.

There were stark differences between wealthy and developing nations all week over funding to adapt to the climate crisis. There was also the idea of setting up a new “loss and damage” fund, under which wealthy nations would pay for climate crisis impacts in more vulnerable countries.