Everything you need to know about COP26, Paris Agreement

By Nneka Nwogwugwu

The acronym, COP26 has been on the headlines for some time and it may not be surprising that some persons don’t know what it is all about.

COP is an acronym for “Conference of Parties.” In UNspeak, a COP is analogous to a meeting of Congress or another legislative body, except they’re just talking about climate change all the time.

In climate land, COPs convene to deal with matters related to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, which is the big UN treaty that dictates that countries need to come together to figure out this whole how to stop this whole global warming thing.

Once a year, representatives from all the countries in the treaty gather in the same physical space to hammer out international climate change action and policy related to the UNFCCC.

COP26 is the specific name of this year’s big climate change meeting that is slated to take place this November.

The UNFCCC was created in 1992, when 154 countries signed a new treaty about climate change. That treaty went into effect in 1994. The first COP happened in 1995 in Berlin, and COPs have met almost every year since then. (The math is slightly off because last year’s COP got postponed due to the pandemic.

Glasgow is where this year’s COP is being held, since the UK is hosting COP.

Every year, the “presidency” of a COP—the country that runs the show and basically makes sure everyone gets along and stuff gets done—switches, and the meeting is generally held in a city within that country.

COPs have been held in countries other than the host. Chile held the presidency of COP25, but it moved the conference to Spain due to protests about rising inequality. (Chile was only the host because Brazil backed out after Jair Bolsonaro won the presidency.

Paris Agreement

At the Paris COP, 192 countries came to an agreement to get the world off fossil fuels and to try and avoid, at maximum, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of additional warming by the end of this century.

The agreement sets an aspirational target of avoiding 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming as well thanks to the advocacy of small island nations.

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to submit their own plans that would detail how much they plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.