WHAT IS THE PARIS AGREEMENT?
The UN Conference of the Parties, known as COP, is an annual summit bringing together governments, businesses and individuals around the world to address the biggest challenge facing humanity: climate change.
COP is attended by the countries that signed the UN climate change treaty in 1994, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or ‘UNFCCC’. There are currently 197 members of the UNFCCC.
This year’s summit will be the 26th COP to take place, hence ‘COP26’. The session was originally set to take place in November 2020, but was delayed until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. As many as 200 world leaders and 36,000 delegates are expected to attend.
COP26 will be hosted by the UK in Glasgow, with Italy as co-presidents. The role of the COP26 presidency is to summon greater ambition from other nations in meeting the binding targets of the Paris Agreement.