COP26: What is it and how did it come about?

By now, it’s likely you’ve heard of COP26. You probably know that it’s happening in Glasgow, and you probably know that it’s taking place in November this year.

In the Ecologi office, it feels like we’ve been in the run-up to COP26 for months and months – and in a way, we have, since it was originally supposed to take place last year, before being postponed by COVID-19.

Businesses in the sustainability space have been aware of COP26 for a while, and news coverage of the COP has been ample in recent weeks. But recently, we’ve noticed that there are very few outlets explaining what a ‘COP’ is, or why and how they take place – and even fewer are taking the time to discuss the history of the COPs, or how international climate collaboration has developed. It’s important to understand this so that we can appreciate how we got to where we are now, just a few short weeks away from Glasgow’s climate conference.

This mini-series will introduce you to COP26, giving a brief and abridged history of the climate conferences that have come before it. We aren’t going to cover everything – but we hope that this mini-series gives you some insight into the context of the COP and that it cuts through some of the noise and climate jargon you’ll see over the coming weeks.

Exploring the history of the COPs

The concept of a ‘COP’ in the context of climate change emerged with the founding of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

This was a conference which followed the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990. (The IPCC is an international collective of climate scientists who come together regularly to summarise the state of the art in climate research.)

This IPCC report, the first “Assessment Report”, which was published two years prior to the Rio Earth Summit, had laid out a scientific consensus for some of the core principles of climate change:

1. That atmospheric ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHGs) cause a planetary warming effect;
2. That human activities are increasing the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere;
3. That taken together, items (1) and (2) will contribute to further warming of the planet through a heightened greenhouse effect.

The UNFCCC was founded in 1992 in order to establish an international forum for collaboration on climate change, and to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. The UNFCCC treaty itself laid out a framework for international collaboration on climate – setting out the playing field and establishing the rules for the ways in which these state and non-state actors could come together to discuss climate change.

Conferences of the Parties to the original agreement – or ‘COPs’ – would take place on an annual basis, for nations, transnational organisations, NGOs and others to come together to discuss the latest developments and negotiate collective action on climate change.

COP1 took place in Berlin in 1995, and subsequent COPs have taken place annually ever since – with the exception of 2020, where the COP was delayed to the COVID-19 pandemic. The COP that was due to take place that year was meant to be hosted in Glasgow, and it was postponed until November 2021; and its number was 26.

Because of this rich back story, in order to fully understand Glasgow’s upcoming COP in its proper context, we ought to go back and revisit some of the key COPs (and other environmental conferences) that have already taken place. Some of these – like the Paris Agreement or the Kyoto Protocol – you might have heard of, whereas others you may not have come across before.

Understanding where we have travelled in international climate collaboration to date will give us the context to understand what COP26 will look like, and what we can expect its outcomes to be.

What happened at the COPs that came before?

Here’s a brief timeline of just some of the key international environmental conferences to date:

1963 – Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES)
1982 – United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS)
1985 – Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer
1987 – Montréal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
1992 – United Nations Conference on Environment and Development  (‘Rio Earth Summit’)
1997 – Kyoto Protocol (COP 3)
2009 – Copenhagen Accord (COP 15 / CMP 5*)
2011 – Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (COP 17 / CMP 7*)
2012 – United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (‘Rio+20’)
2015 – United Nations Sustainable Development Summit
2015 – Paris Agreement (COP 21 / CMP 11*)
2021 – Glasgow COP 26 / CMP 16* / CMA 3**

*conferences marked CMP include meetings of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol

**conferences marked CMA include meetings of the Parties to the Paris Agreement

Across these conferences, important concepts and frameworks in climate change and sustainability became prominent and were developed – some of which, nowadays, we are very familiar with.

These concepts and frameworks include:

• the banning of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (in Vienna, 1985 and Montréal, 1987);
• the establishment of emissions trading schemes (in Kyoto, 1997);
• the development of the REDD+ framework (including in Bali, 2007);
• the concept of limiting warming to 2ºC (in Copenhagen, 2011) or to 1.5ºC (Paris, 2015);
• and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (in 2012) – and indeed, their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals, in 2000.

How climate agreements develop over time

The timeline above gives an image of how international commitments to climate action have developed – and grown more complex – over time.

Before Rio in 1992, there were only disparate international treaties on specific global environmental challenges, like the governance of the oceans (UNCLOS), or the cross-border movement of endangered species (CITES), and no overarching frameworks under which climate cooperation could take place.

The establishment of the UNFCCC in 1992 meant that COPs could take place, bringing together hundreds of nations and transnational entities (like the European Union) to discuss climate change.

With the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 having established legally binding emissions reduction targets, CMPs (meetings of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol) could take place simultaneously at the COPs, bringing together signatories to discuss progress against these reductions targets.

With the Paris Agreement in 2015 establishing nationally determined contributions (‘NDCs’) to emissions reductions and a ‘ratchet mechanism’ to increase the ambition of these NDCs every 5 years, CMAs (meetings of the Parties to the Paris Agreement) began to take place as well. 

Nowadays, some COPs – like Glasgow’s COP26 – also host CMPs and CMAs.

This all means that Glasgow itself is COP26 / CMP16 / CMA3, meaning that within the same two week period in Glasgow there will be meetings and negotiations between the signatories of Kyoto, Paris, and of course the UNFCCC from Rio.

Though we haven’t focused on it in this article, the Rio Earth Summit was also where the separate Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was established, with its own COPs meeting biennially, to safeguard the biodiversity of species – with CBD COP15 taking place soon as well.

All this demonstrates how international environmental conferences have gotten ever more complex over time – involving more actors who are parties to more treaties, with ever more topics to discuss.

Who else gets involved in the COPs?

Aside from political negotiations, other factors and tensions come into play at the COPs, since these climate conferences do not take place in a vacuum. During the conference in Paris in 2015, nearly 800,000 people marched for climate change worldwide, demanding a just transition to 100% renewables, and that all remaining fossil fuels be left in the ground.

At the time of COP21, the city itself was also on high alert, as just two weeks prior, the terror attacks at the Bataclan theatre and on the streets of Paris had taken place. Activists who had travelled to Paris for the conference were banned from congregating, and voices – particularly from the Global South, often from the countries most affected by and least responsible for climate change – were shut out. The gripping documentary film Not Without Us tells the stories of some of the activists on the ground in Paris during COP21.

Aside from grassroots activists, plenty of others also get involved at the COPs. Journalists descend on the host cities, charities and NGOs attend as delegates, commercial interests battle for flattering PR coverage, local businesses scramble to accommodate the rush of visitors, politicians write themselves into history books with grand claims about the future of the human race, and regrettably, big polluters use the conferences as an opportunity to greenwash themselves.

So really, the COPs are a melting pot. Whilst a lot of the news coverage you’ll see during the conference will concern the negotiations and their outcomes, there will be a great deal more going on behind the scenes, and on the streets of Glasgow.

What makes COP26 remarkable?

It’s likely that COP26 is the most eagerly awaited climate conference ever.

Glasgow is the first opportunity to see the ‘ratchet mechanism’ from Paris in action – compelling signatory countries to increase the ambition of the nationally-determined contributions they agreed to in Paris.

As yet, it’s unclear how these ratcheted NDCs will take shape, and it is likely that nations who fail to commit to (and follow through with) robust and science-based climate policies will be heavily criticised by activists, the media, and other participating nations.

The one-year delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has only served to ramp up expectations, and within the last 12 months we have also borne witness to some of the tragic consequences of our continued emissions – consequences like historic wildfires, floods, hurricanes and more – all of which seemed unimaginable to many people only a few years ago. 

It’s likely, given the recent activations of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and others in the UK, that there will be a large activist presence in Glasgow during the conference. We can expect protests, publicity stunts, and other kinds of grassroots activity around the city – and the world – when the conference takes place in November. One march, organised by the COP 26 Coalition, is organised for 6th November.

Notably though, there will also be a great deal of important voices left out. Many activists and indigenous voices from the Global South have been excluded due to political and financial barriers to their attendance, such as vaccine inequity and strict border rules making them ineligible to travel to the country due to both UK and Scottish government regulations. Another issue preventing these communities from participating in COP is the eye-watering price of overnight stays in and around Glasgow during the two-week conference. At the time of writing, a quick online search produces results for hotel rooms and short-term rentals during the conference ranging between £500 and £3,000 per night.

The recent publication of the findings of IPCC Working Group I’s contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (entitled The Physical Science Basis) has only further stressed the urgency of the climate crisis and put more pressure on the parties at COP to take concrete action on climate.

The wording in the latest report gives the starkest warning yet of the unequivocal consensus among scientists that the time to take dramatic and permanent action to reduce emissions is now – and all this takes place in the context of numerous loud and clear acknowledgements that current national commitments are woefully insufficient to limit warming to the 1.5ºC limit from Paris.

All of these factors suggest that COP26 is going to be worth paying attention to. It is likely to be a remarkable couple of weeks up in Scotland, and the outcomes from the COP will likely define international climate action over the next several years – years which we know to be pivotal in our ongoing fight to limit warming as much as possible.

Our team will be closely following all the developments from Glasgow. We’ll be publishing regular updates from each day of the COP proceedings, helping you to make sense of these complex and politically-charged climate negotiations.

Next in this mini-series, we’ll take a look at what you should look out for at COP26.

In the next article, we will explore what to expect from the COP negotiations; explain the way the conference proceedings and surrounding activities will take place in Glasgow; show you how to spot and call out the corporate greenwashing which is bound to take place at COP; and also discuss the many voices that have been excluded from Glasgow, which as a result will unfortunately not heard on the world stage.

The second and final part in our run-up-to-COP article series – What to look out for at COP26 – can be viewed here. 

Find out how we offset all the world leaders’ travel to COP26.

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