COP26 Glasgow - draft conference decision released - strong on empathy, light on agreed action

The major political leaders have left COP26 and the nitty-gritty negotiations between officials has been progressing. But will there be enough action taken to prevent catastrophic temperature change with all that it entails ? 

The draft CMA statement ('CMA' being the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement) has been released. The current draft over 84 clauses covers topics such as the science for effective climate action, adaptation finance, mitigation, technology transfer and capacity-building for adaptation, loss and damage caused by climate change, implementation, and finally collaboration.

Much of the draft statement has the language of diplomacy, with terms such as 'recognises', 'welcomes', 'reaffirms', 'úrges'  Of note, the draft agreement -

• recognizes that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C by 2100 requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century;

• decides to establish a work programme to urgently scale-up mitigation ambition and implementation during the critical decade of the 2020s;
• resolves to move swiftly with the full implementation and delivery of the Paris Agreement.

There are many placeholders in the draft decision demonstrating there are still multiple points to negotiate.

The draft decision can be found at this link: Overarching decision 1-CMA