The closing statement was adopted on Saturday more than 24 hours after the scheduled deadline for the event, and after painstaking negotiations at the Scottish Events Centre.
At the last moment, the Indian delegation was able to change the wording of the text referring to coal, which was ultimately advice to “reduce”, rather than eliminate, the use of coal in plants without the required technology. and storage of emissions.
Among the novelties, the document, approved by representatives of nearly 200 participating countries, calls on rich nations to double their financial contributions by 2025 to help poor and vulnerable nations cope and mitigate the effects of climate change.
The Glasgow Declaration also called on the parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement to advance their plans to cut emissions into next year, with the goal of maintaining the goal of limiting global temperature to 1.5°C.
Although significant compared to previous summits, especially due to references to fossil fuels, the agreement left a bitter taste in the mouths of environmentalists who expect more serious commitments from world leaders to curb climate change.
The COP26 conference is over, and here’s a brief summary: blah blah, wrote on Twitter the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who had predicted from the start the failure of the event, which she described as a PR ploy to launder the president’s image. polluted environment.
Thunberg, who has become an icon in the fight against climate change, emphasized that the real work continues outside the plenary session of the event, and that “we will never give up”.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, for his part, lamented that the political will at COP26 was not sufficient to overcome the deep contradictions.
said Guterres, who has called for an end to coal use.
The leader of Britain’s opposition Labor Party, Keir Starmer, welcomed the deal, but saw COP26 as a missed opportunity, fraught with too many promises for the future.
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