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Sams_Blog_COP26_Header_01B

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

<h3>By now, it’s likely you’ve heard of COP 26. You probably know that it’s happening in Glasgow, and you probably know that it’s taking place in November this year.</h3>
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In the Ecologi office, it feels like we’ve been in the run-up to COP 26 for months and months &#8211; 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 COP 26 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 &#8211; 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 COP 26, giving a brief and abridged history of the climate conferences that have come before it. We aren’t going to cover everything &#8211; 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.

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<h2>Exploring the history of the COPs</h2>
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:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">that atmospheric ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHGs) cause a planetary warming effect;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">that human activities are increasing the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">that taken together, items (1) and (2) will contribute to further warming of the planet through a heightened greenhouse effect.</li>
</ol>

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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 <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-convention/what-is-the-united-nations-framework-convention-on-climate-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNFCCC treaty itself</a> laid out a framework for international collaboration on climate &#8211; 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 &#8211; or ‘COPs’ &#8211; 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.
COP 1 took place in Berlin in 1995, and subsequent COPs have taken place annually ever since &#8211; with the exception of 2020, where the COP <a href="https://unfccc.int/news/cop26-postponed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was delayed to the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. 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 &#8211; like the Paris Agreement or the Kyoto Protocol &#8211; 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 COP 26 will look like, and what we can expect to be its outcomes.

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<h2>What happened at the COPs that came before?</h2>
Here’s a brief timeline of just some of the key international environmental conferences to date:
1963 &#8211; Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) 
1982 &#8211; United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS) 
1985 &#8211; Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer 
1987 &#8211; Montréal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer 
1992 &#8211; United Nations Conference on Environment and Development  (‘Rio Earth Summit’) 
1997 &#8211; Kyoto Protocol (COP 3) 
2009 &#8211; Copenhagen Accord (COP 15 / CMP 5*) 
2011 &#8211; Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (COP 17 / CMP 7*) 
2012 &#8211; United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (‘Rio+20’) 
2015 &#8211; United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 
2015 &#8211; Paris Agreement (COP 21 / CMP 11*) 
2021 &#8211; 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

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Across these conferences, important concepts and frameworks in climate change and sustainability became prominent and were developed &#8211; some of which, nowadays, we are very familiar with.
These concepts and frameworks include:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">the banning of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (in Vienna, 1985 and Montréal, 1987);</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">the establishment of emissions trading schemes (in Kyoto, 1997);</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">the development of <a href="https://redd.unfccc.int/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the REDD+ framework</a> (including in Bali, 2007);</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">the concept of limiting warming to 2ºC (in Copenhagen, 2011) or to 1.5ºC (Paris, 2015);</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">and the <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UN Sustainable Development Goals</a> (in 2012) &#8211; and indeed, their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals, in 2000.</li>
</ul>

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<h2>How climate agreements develop over time</h2>
The timeline above gives an image of how international commitments to climate action have developed &#8211; and grown more complex &#8211; over time.
Before Rio in 1992, there were only disparate international treaties on specific global environmental challenges, like the <a href="https://www.iucn.org/theme/marine-and-polar/our-work/international-ocean-governance/unclos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">governance of the oceans (UNCLOS)</a>, or the <a href="https://cites.org/eng/disc/what.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cross-border movement of endangered species (CITES)</a>, 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 &#8211; like Glasgow’s COP 26 &#8211; also host CMPs and CMAs.
This all means that Glasgow itself is COP 26 / CMP 16 / CMA 3, 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 &#8211; with CBD COP 15 taking place soon as well.
All this demonstrates how international environmental conferences have gotten ever more complex over time &#8211; involving more actors who are parties to more treaties, with ever more topics to discuss.

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<h2>Who else gets involved in the COPs?</h2>
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, <a href="https://350.org/global-climate-march/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nearly 800,000 people marched for climate worldwide</a>, demanding a just transition to 100% renewables, and that all remaining fossil fuels be left in the ground.
At the time of COP 21, 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 &#8211; particularly from the Global South, often from the countries most affected by and least responsible for climate change &#8211; were shut out. The gripping documentary film <a href="http://www.notwithoutusmovie.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Not Without Us</a> tells the stories of some of the activists on the ground in Paris during COP 21.
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 <a href="https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=cop26+greenwashing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as an opportunity to greenwash themselves</a>.
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.

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<h2>What makes COP 26 remarkable?</h2>
It’s likely that COP 26 is the most eagerly awaited climate conference ever.
Glasgow is the first opportunity to see the ‘ratchet mechanism’ from Paris in action &#8211; compelling signatory countries to <a href="https://www.climatewatchdata.org/2020-ndc-tracker" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increase the ambition of the nationally-determined contributions</a> 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 &#8211; consequences like historic wildfires, floods, hurricanes and more &#8211; 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 &#8211; and the world &#8211; when the conference takes place in November. One march, <a href="https://cop26coalition.org/gda/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">organised by the COP 26 Coalition</a>, is organised for 6th November.

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Notably though, there will also be a great deal of important voices left out. Many activists and indigenous voices from the Global South <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58472566" target="_blank" rel="noopener">have been excluded due to political and financial barriers</a> 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 <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IPCC Working Group I’s contribution</a> 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 &#8211; and all this takes place in the context of numerous loud and clear acknowledgements that current national commitments <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/united-nations-antonio-guterres-berlin-patricia-espinosa-paris-b1922220.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">are woefully insufficient</a> to limit warming to the 1.5ºC limit from Paris.
All of these factors suggest that COP 26 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 &#8211; 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.

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<h3>Next in this mini-series, we’ll take a look at what you should look out for at COP 26.</h3>
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 &#8211; <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/articles/blog/what-will-happen-at-cop26" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What to look out for at COP 26</a> &#8211; can be viewed here. 
Find out how we <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/articles/in-depth/world-leaders-cop26" target="_blank" rel="noopener">offset all the world leaders&#8217; travel to COP26</a>.
<a href="https://x.ecologi.com/plan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up today to take real climate action with Ecologi</a>.

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Gamification: the key to sustainability engagement?

Gamification uses gaming elements to influence real-world behaviour. This makes gamification both a powerful tool to engage with activists, and the newest weapon in the fight against excessive carbon emissions.
Global concentrations of CO2 are now 50% higher than before the industrial revolution. The result: increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, frequent extreme weather events and climate refugees being forced from their homes. These are sobering consequences and we need a solution that encourages people to take greater positive action.
It’s fair to say that the majority of people living in western society do care about the planet but the reality for them is that climate change is somewhat abstract. When you’re living in the leafy suburbs and your only notion of climate change concerns starving polar bears and diminishing rainforests, visualising how it affects you individually is hard to imagine. You can see why it can be hard to motivate people to change their behaviour. But how can we reach these casual climate activists?

<h2>Changing behaviours</h2>
You need to first accept that an inconvenient combination of factors surrounding climate change makes it hard to motivate people. 
Fortunately, there are proven strategies, accompanied by support and engagement to tackle this problem. Academic research asserts psychological techniques and theories to design campaigns and programmes that increase sustainable behaviour. This includes value-based communication, which is a way of communicating information that’s tailored to the audience&#8217;s specific values. Other techniques range from evoking empathy, to normative modelling; the method of demonstrating something to other people within similar social circles who are already performing the behaviour. 
There are also other techniques based on emerging theoretical models. Gamification is one such technique gaining increased attention in the world of climate change and sustainability.

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<h2>What is gamification?</h2>
Gamification is the use of gaming elements within non-gaming contexts to influence real-world behaviour. Gamified programmes take the features of games that keep players&#8217; attention, like points, badges, leaderboards and challenges, and apply them to real-world situations that otherwise might seem mundane or boring to increase engagement. These gaming building blocks are used to engage users, solve problems and drive specific behaviours. 
Gamification is increasingly popular and can be used in lots of different contexts, such as education, health or business settings. Many companies have introduced gamified schemes to increase customer or employee engagement with great success. 
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<h2>The science behind gamification</h2>
Both individuals and businesses often think that acting positively for climate change presents a trade-off between short-term and long-term benefits. Decades of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/107/2/573/1838331?login=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">work by psychologists</a> indicates that we tend to overvalue benefits in the short term compared to those of the long term; so-called temporal discounting. Benefits in the future can lose their value or meaning if they are perceived as being too far away. Put simply – people are often unwilling to make changes or sacrifices in the short term because they don’t get an immediate reward.
The result often presents an attitude-behaviour gap. People are concerned about the environment but often fail to consistently integrate this concern into their daily behaviour. This same gap is the reason why a person may often be aware – and willing to do something – about the plastic crisis but then at the same time, without thinking about it, find themselves thirsty and run to the vending machine to grab a bottle of Coke.
This gap between our choices and our values makes it hard to tackle big-picture issues like climate change, which rely on sweeping behaviour change across society. Fortunately, gamification helps enforce those positive behaviours with small and regular rewards.

<h2>How does gamification influence sustainability engagement?</h2>
In recent years, gamification has gained increasing attention from the climate change and sustainability movement after recognising the advantages of engaging people around environmental issues. These advantages include:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Reaching a broader audience – Ambitious carbon reduction goals require high participation rates. Gamification can make subjects attractive to some people who otherwise may not be inclined to care about climate change, motivating a diverse group of users to get involved.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Driving competition – Introducing an element of competition means that people are more likely to enact behavioural change. For example, a US company called Opower is using the element of social competition by equipping homes with sensors enabling residents to compare their household energy consumption with their neighbours, and broadcasting their achievements on Facebook. They now work with over 100 energy companies and are so effective that in 2016, they were able to achieve the equivalent of 2 tera-watt hours of electricity savings. That’s enough energy to power every home in Miami for more than a year.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Demonstrating social norms – Research shows how people are more likely to perform a behaviour if they think that lots of other people are also doing it. Sustainability gamification often features leaderboards, allowing you to see others taking action and subsequently normalising it. In fact, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15534510701755614" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one study</a> found that normative messaging increased the re-use of towels in hotel rooms – the most effective message for driving behavioural change was: 75% of guests who stayed in this room used their towels more than once.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Rewards drive engagement – Being rewarded for certain achievements motivates people to work towards goals and complete them. For example, achieving badges when reaching a certain number of points or carrying out a certain behaviour is a great way to incentivise good deeds. </li>
</ul>
Dedicated scientific journals, particularly those looking at energy savings, state that gamified applications can help users change their behaviour to be more conscious of environmental issues. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629619305183" target="_blank" rel="noopener">One study looking at techniques to promote eco-driving with battery electric vehicles</a> found that the use of game design elements significantly reduced energy consumption compared to normal. Similar findings show encouraging behavioural change for <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/712" target="_blank" rel="noopener">water conservation</a> and <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/8/11160" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sustainable tourism practice</a>.

<h2>The Ecologi gamification approach</h2>
Ecologi attracts and engages people. And when it comes to taking climate action, we strive to make sustainability fun and easy for our community. Our product uses these successful gaming techniques that engage our audience and achieve as much climate impact as possible! 
Creating a dynamic profile –  Every Ecologi user gets their own dynamic profile. They can watch their virtual forest grow and see the climate impact they are making, giving users the motivation to keep coming back. Users see their impact grow over time and increase their climate action contribution.

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A dedicated goals section – This part of your profile lets you set climate lifestyle goals. These include not supporting fast fashion, eating a vegan diet or even line-drying your clothes. By making these visible on your profile, and being able to tick them off when you’ve achieved them, we hope to motivate users to make more climate-friendly choices.

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Leaderboards – Individual users, businesses and Sparkly Tree referrals all get their own leaderboards. Healthy competition between peers is good. Plus – it motivates people to achieve as much climate action as possible in their quest to beat others. For example, you strive to plant more trees and reach the top of the leaderboard. Just ask the Ecologi team about healthy competition…

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Planting Sparkly Trees – 18% of our Ecologi account subscribers have been referred by another user. Refer a new subscriber and Ecologi Sparkly Trees appear on your profile as a tile with flashing sparkles. This small gesture is mighty effective and encourages users to get their friends and family to sign up, and ultimately increase a positive climate impact.

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Badges to show off your progress – Earn badges for the amount of time you’re Climate Positive. We award badges for the number of trees funded, the number of sparkly trees you acquire, the tonnes of carbon you offset and for reaching top positions on the leaderboard. These motivate our users to engage in even more positive climate impacting activities to achieve these awards. Who doesn’t love a badge and well-earned recognition?

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<h2>Gamification normalises and incentivises helping the planet</h2>
We need everyone to care about our cause and take meaningful action. It’s the only way we’ll have a proper impact on the climate crisis. Gamification is just one of the innovative strategies we’re using to get people interested and involved – thanks to the use of gaming elements in non-game contexts to influence real-world behaviour. 
Our goal is to encourage sustainability and offset carbon emissions – but we want to have fun along the way.
<a href="https://x.ecologi.com/plan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up today and join the movement</a>.

<h2>How our partners also used gamification</h2>
Some of our partners have gone even further with gamification and are using real games to engage people and motivate them into action. Otherwise dubbed as serious games, this technique does not require real-world activities to complete. Serious games are intended to inspire behaviour changes through education and provoking thoughts and emotions.

<h3>Alba: A Wildlife Adventure</h3>
Our partners UsTwo had major success with their game, Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. It follows Alba as she visits her grandparents on a Mediterranean island. She is ready for a peaceful holiday but when she sees an animal in danger, she takes action. Players join Alba as she sets up an organisation to help save the island. This game inspires action through play by integrating themes of environmental conservation and sustainability. 
The serious games theory suggests that by taking environmental action in the game, users are more likely to translate this into their own lives. For Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, just playing the game results in climate impact in the real world as well; for every copy of the game that is downloaded or sold, UsTwo plants one tree with Ecologi. They aim to plant 1 million trees in total. <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/albasforest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Check out their forest here</a>.

<h3>Terragenesis &#8211; transforming worlds </h3>
Ecologi recently partnered with Tilting Point to plant real trees based on players’ actions in the game TerraGenesis. This is a mobile terraforming simulator that asks players to take barren worlds and transform them into new homes for humanity. 
TerraGenesis now plants trees based on actions that players take in the game, including daily logins, ad views, completion of missions and more. Players can monitor their personal impact as well as that of the TerraGenesis community via an in-game hub. Players also unlock rewards as they reach tree-planting milestones.This is an innovative gamification approach that involves actions that players take within the game to transform virtual worlds. In doing so, their gaming actions actually help to reforest and rewild our very own planet. You can <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/tiltingpoint" target="_blank" rel="noopener">view the TerraGenesis forest here</a>.

Finance Reports

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You are reading the Ecologi finance update for April to June 2021. 
As part of our drive to be transparent about our finances and operations, we publish finance updates once per quarter, to try and lift the lid on what we do here at Ecologi.

Between April and June, our subscribers funded 6,048,818 trees and 112,508 tonnes of verified carbon offsets. Our community&#8217;s tree total for this quarter is up 41% from the 4,279,818 trees funded in Q1 2021, and our volume of carbon credits funded is up 40% on last quarter&#8217;s 87,222 tonnes.
You can see our full impact in our public impact ledger <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dACvzjE5nBE1cKZBAhYzsUa7rIiLJqCWXVgY4bNS8_Q/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>, and find out more detail about the projects we have funded <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/projects" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
The latest graphs of our trees and carbon funding received against our tree and carbon purchases are below.
This quarter was unusual because in April we saw an enormous uptick in the number of trees funded for planting through the platform. In April alone, our community funded 2.86 million trees &#8211; by far our biggest monthly total yet, and dwarfing May and June&#8217;s figures, even though they were very close to being record months themselves.

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Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.24.34

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Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.25.28

Individual subscriptions represented a gross income of £437,842.58 this quarter, and Climate Positive Workforce® subscriptions represented a gross income of £284,252.46. Our total income from all subscribers and marketplace was £1,333,403.26.
The area graph of our monthly income by revenue stream for this quarter is below. This illustrates how our income streams have grown over the time period.

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Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.34.41

Our commitment to funding climate solutions for our individual subscribers and marketplace is 85%, and for our Climate Positive Workforce® customers is 77.5%.
Across this quarter, the necessary commitment to funding climate solutions, based on the weighted average commitment required across all subscriber income was 82.05%. This is calculated by multiplying the commitment required for each income stream by the amount of revenue generated by that income stream across the time period, adding those figures together, and then dividing this by the total income.
Our total cost of sales (which includes our <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/">tree planting</a>, carbon offsetting and transaction costs) was £1,001,563.83, with a further $319,700 (approximately £231,000) for reforestation in May and June still remaining to clear. Once these payments have been completed, we project that our total commitment to climate impact in Q2 2021 will have been well over our commitment of 82.05%. Taking £231,000 as the figure, this would mean our commitment to climate impact in the period was over 90%.

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Screenshot 2021-04-15 at 12.36.32

The waterfall chart below shows the different things we spent money on during this quarter, and this quarter&#8217;s resulting surplus or deficit.
You can also see a visualisation of the amount we spent on climate solutions in this quarter against our total income, to verify the above workings out.

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Screenshot 2021-04-15 at 12.38.59

You can find out more about our finances and operations through our <a href="https://ecologi.baremetrics.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Baremetrics dashboard</a>, as well as viewing subscriber totals and impact receipts in our <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dACvzjE5nBE1cKZBAhYzsUa7rIiLJqCWXVgY4bNS8_Q/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Public Impact &amp; Operations Ledger</a>.

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Welcome to our COP26 hub, where we’ll be bringing you all the latest update from the climate conference in Glasgow! 
Here&#8217;s what you need to know so far:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://ukcop26.org/glasgow-leaders-declaration-on-forests-and-land-use/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Glasgow Leaders&#8217; Declaration on Forests and Land Use</a> &#8211; a pledge to end and reverse deforestation by 2030, signed by over 100 countries, including Brazil and Indonesia.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.globalmethanepledge.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Global Methane Pledge</a> to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 (using a 2020 baseline) signed by over 90 countries, but China, India and Russia are not among them.</li>
<li aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-china-joint-glasgow-declaration-on-enhancing-climate-action-in-the-2020s/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The US and China have released a rare joint statement</a> committing to cooperate in their efforts to maintain within 1.5ºC warming.</li>
</ul>
With lots going on over the next 2 weeks, we’ll be working hard to bring you a daily summary to keep you in the loop. Take a look below for our round-ups from each day from our team on the ground.
You&#8217;ll find updates about outcomes from the COP, as well as our notes and thoughts from on the ground in Glasgow.

COP26 Daily Reports

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