Cop26 could go down in history – just not the way the UK hoped

Rarely before has there been a summit where a result has run so much against both proceedings as a whole and all the best efforts of the organisers, says Mary Dejevsky

Cop26 president Alok Sharma was close to tears on the final day of the summit (AFP via Getty)

All right, so new Covid variants and Christmas parties (past and present) have an immediacy at this time of year that other concerns may lack. It is nonetheless striking, is it not, how fast and how completely the Glasgow climate change summit has sunk from view, given how totally the preparations and the proceedings dominated the news, not just here in the UK, but further afield?

Of course, that dominance was itself deceptive – it was always more appearance than reality, reflecting the host country’s ambition to project itself not just as an effective diplomatic force on climate change, but as Global Britain and “a force for good”, as the former foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, billed it. Nor is it quite true to say that it has vanished – in specialist climate circles and in the think tank world the assessments go on.

Still, the speed with which Cop26 has been consigned to oblivion, not least on its home turf, might suggest – as did some reporting at the time – that these goals were not entirely achieved.

In purely climate terms, that view was partly reinforced this week by the Climate Change Committee’s official assessment. That committee, set up under the 2008 Climate Change Act as an independent advisory group, has the job of keeping tabs on everything related to climate change and offering advice to the government accordingly. At best, it damned Glasgow with faint praise.

While the heightened ambitions set out at Cop26, marked “a step forward”, it said, success could be judged only by what is done “over the coming year and beyond”. Rather than set new targets, it suggested, governments might do better to ensure they met the ones they already had. The UK, it pointed out, was “nowhere near” meeting even its relatively modest emissions targets and would have to do much more even to come close. To which the government’s response boiled down to: don’t worry, we’re on course to succeed.

There were other ways, too, in which both the course and the results of Cop26 appear underwhelming. The leaders of China and Russia were notable absentees – which detracted from the top level global line-up, even if it did not affect the outcome. There were complaints about how things were organised – from transport to admission to communications – which could harm the UK’s jealously guarded reputation as an exemplary host (and follows the disastrous security at the Euros final last summer). There was unhappiness, too, among foreign reporters about the extent to which they felt information was being managed or “spun”.

On the plus side, there were agreements on methane and deforestation, even if not everyone signed up to everything. Many nuts and bolts of the climate change discussion were also hammered out, with definitions and standards agreed for the first time – not the stuff of headlines, but a crucial advance. It could also be argued in mitigation that it was a near-miracle to gather 190 countries at Glasgow, just a year late and with Covid still a threat.

Nonetheless, the abiding image from Glasgow will surely be that of the UK’s climate envoy and Cop26 president, Alok Sharma, apologising and close to tears on the final day. Agreement had been reached, but it had been achieved at the cost of a last-minute amendment that effectively diluted what many had seen as a key commitment. A pledge to “phase out” the “use of unabated coal and subsidies for fossil fuels” was replaced with a pledge merely to “phase down”.

It was a tiny change to be sure, but as drafters of any agreements well know, such a detail can be the difference between success and failure. And words matter. “Phasing out” and “phasing down” signify rather different things. Sharma clearly felt – and many agreed – that Cop26 under his presidency had fallen short.

Which is narrowly true. A commitment to end the use of coal worldwide had been seen as a central aim by many Cop26 delegates, and that commitment was watered down. I wonder, though, whether there is not a bigger picture, and whether that amendment might not signify far more than this one weakened pledge. Specifically, I wonder whether the Glasgow Cop may not be seen through the longer lens of history as more of a game-changer, even more than the splashy, stylish show of unanimity in Paris six years ago that the UK was trying so hard to surpass.

Over many years of covering international conferences and summits, I do not recall any – with the possible exception of the 1986 Gorbachev-Reagan summit at Reykjavik – where a result has run so much against the tide of the proceedings as a whole and against all the best efforts of the organisers. It is hardly a new ploy for a demand to be sprung at the last moment, but here everything seemed to be done and dusted, successfully sewn up – until it wasn’t.

Exactly where the demand originated is not entirely clear. China and India were named, although India insists that all its delegate did was read out the amendment, and that the new wording involved the US, the EU and China. One view is that the change followed the surprise announcement of an agreement between the US and China, and echoed the formulation there. It may also be true that the US welcomed both the change and the chance to shelter behind others.

The bigger point, however, is that between them, China and India were able to alter what was seen as a key element in an international agreement – and that they had the weight to do so. This marks a huge – a historic – change in international dynamics, from which it is hard to see any going back. The global north can no longer dictate the terms; the dynamics of international relations have changed and the balance of power has shifted.

The message is just starting to get through. Just before writing this, I caught an Austrian official – Michael Losch, his country’s special envoy for green industrial policy – telling the Bruegel think tank in Brussels that the EU was “no longer the biggest guy at the table”, that it therefore had less leverage and would have to adjust its approach to “getting others” – by which he meant China and India – “on board”.

The significance of this change is enormous. It means that Paris was the last Cop where the global north could essentially dictate terms. Future Cops will have to take much greater account of the concerns (and the realities) of China and the global south. It may no longer be enough for the north to promise incentives and compensation for those countries that undertake to reform their economies as the north would like – promises that have not been honoured and were always absurdly inadequate anyway. The north may have to make concessions on the substance and the timetable, too.

The next Cop is set for next year in Egypt. And it is not hard to imagine that China and India could be emboldened to make common cause once again. The south’s resentment at being told by the rich north to take a different route to industrialisation than the one that gave the US and Europe their present quality of life could also become a lot louder and a lot harder to ignore.

The UK, the EU and (with slightly less enthusiasm) the United States may believe that their prescription for combating climate change is on course to win over the world. The long game played by China at Glasgow suggests that they may have another think coming.