In the period between October 31st – November 12th – The 26th United Nations Conference (COP26) will be held in Glasgow, Scotland. The aim of the conference is to encourage countries to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
COP26 will focus on action to protect and restore forests and critical ecosystems, and advocate for a transition to a sustainable, resilient and natural society. The organizer of COP26 says that this year should be decisive, because despite the opportunities, we are not acting fast enough. To avoid a climate crisis, countries need to join forces immediately. Many experts also believe that COP26 should emphasize the urgency of action.
Just to remind you, in 2015, at the 21st Conference of the Parties, the participating countries created the Paris Agreement. With this Agreement, countries committed to adopting national plans determining how much they would reduce their emissions – known as Nationally Determined Contributions or “NDCs” and agreed to adopt an updated plan every five years that would reflect their highest possible ambition, in order to limiting the rise in average temperature up to 1.5 degrees. Macedonia ratified the Paris Agreement in 2017, and at the beginning of 2021 submitted the revised national contributions committing itself to reducing CO2 emissions up to 51% by 2040.
This year’s Glasgow Summit is a time when countries need to update their emission reduction plans, but unfortunately the commitments made in Paris are not close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, and the time to achieve this is very short. The decade by 2030 will be crucial. As important as Paris was, it will be COP26, as countries will have to make more efforts to maintain a 1.5 degree temperature rise.
We will follow the events of the Conference in the next two weeks and see if the countries will reach an agreement that will be in favor of reducing emissions and saving the planet Earth.