The UN Climate Change Conference 2020 is the 26th climate change conference. It was scheduled to take place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2020. However, due to the COVID 19 pandemic, it was postponed and will now be held from October 31 to November 12, 2021. The conference will be hosted by the United Kingdom and Italy.
Through the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change, parties have agreed to prevent dangerous anthropogenic impacts on the climate system and to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions. To date, 197 countries have ratified the convention. At the 26th UN Climate Change Conference, the international community must agree on concrete measures to halt the climate crisis and achieve the 1.5-degree target. According to UNEP, in order to get to the common 1.5-degree path, greenhouse gas emissions would have to be more than halved over the next eight years. It is becoming increasingly clear that short-term adjustments are now particularly important - such as a rapid phase-out of coal, oil and gas in favor of renewable energies. More and more countries are pledging to be climate neutral in the second half of the century. This means that they will then only emit as many greenhouse gases as can be offset. After the EU and the USA, China and Japan now also want to become climate neutral. Australia, Russia, and Turkey have also joined the ranks of countries that had previously been reluctant to do so. Another issue that will be discussed in Glasgow is the financing of climate aid for poor countries in the global south. These countries are responsible for only a small proportion of global emissions but are particularly threatened by the consequences of climate change.
The international community also wants to clarify the international trade in emissions certificates. The aim is to formulate in a joint set of rules how countries can exchange emissions and savings of greenhouse gases such as CO2 among themselves in order to meet their targets. However, some key players will be absent from the deliberations. China's President Xi Jinping and Russia's leader Vladimir Putin, the heads of state of two major greenhouse gas emitters, will be absent. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also canceled his participation in the world climate conference at short notice. As a reason, Erdogan referred on Monday to concerns about security at the summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
