The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was held in Glasgow (United Kingdom), has ended with a decision to reduce the use of coal and end fossil fuel subsidies.

The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was held in Glasgow (United Kingdom), has ended with a decision to reduce the use of coal and end fossil fuel subsidies. Likewise, the text adopted by the 196 countries that are part of the Convention keeps alive the commitment to ensure that the planet’s temperature does not increase by more than 1.5 °C.

For the Vice-President and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, it is “a good agreement that lays the foundations for the new stage until 2030”. Ribera explained that it is “a significant step forward that confirms the courageous commitment to achieve emissions reductions compatible with the scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and keep the 1.5°C target alive, and takes steps to start definitively banishing coal and ending fossil fuel subsidies. An agreement in which the importance of increasingly complex and essential work is finally assumed, such as investing in adaptation in all countries and having agile and rapid mechanisms to respond to major climate disasters in which adaptation is not possible”.

The final decision includes the goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally by 45% by 2030 (over 2010) and the urgency of accelerating climate ambition in this decade, following the IPCC. In this regard, and recognising that there is a gap in national emission reduction commitments, a work programme is being launched to make the 1.5°C target viable, establishing annual ambition reviews against the five-year cycle of ambition set out in the Paris Agreement.

With the aim of keeping the pressure on ambition at the highest level, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will host a leaders’ event in 2022 to discuss climate ambition. In addition, for the first time, specific sectoral actions have been established in Glasgow for this decade to significantly reduce the use of coal and end fossil fuel subsidies, and the link with biodiversity and the oceans has been strengthened, agendas with clear synergies and shared benefits on which work will continue.

BOOSTING ADAPTATION
In terms of adaptation, it receives the support it needed in a context in which natural disasters due to climate change are on the rise. Vice-President Ribera has been chosen as facilitator of the negotiation in this area, which from now on leaves its secondary role with respect to mitigation and seeks indicators and methodologies to measure its progress, establishing a technical work programme to help, evaluate and measure more action on adaptation. This responds to the demand of developing countries, with a greater concretization of the adaptation goal that was established in Paris.

In addition, the need for more adaptation funding to balance mitigation finance has been recognized. In this regard, the Glasgow decision calls on developed countries to double their adaptation financing by 2025 compared to 2019.