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.

In 2015, Paris hosted the 21 Conference of the Parties, COP21. The event gave rise to the most significant benchmark of any COP to date: the 1.5ᶜ limit. The talks resulted in an agreement to try to ensure that global temperatures did not exceed 1.5^oC  above pre-industrial levels, and ‘well below’ 2^oC . Out of 197 member countries, 191 signed the agreement, which also included targets to reduce harmful greenhouse gases and increase renewable energy sources. 

To meet this goal, every country must contribute emissions reductions and set out targets for doing so by 2025 or 2030. These plans are known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).  

In 2020, the Paris Agreement resurfaced in global conversations when the United States, under the presidency of Donald Trump, pulled out of the deal.  

Source: flora-fauna.org