The UN’s climate agency (CMA) has called for an acceleration of climate finance, an end to fossil fuel subsidies and for governments to commit to greater emissions reduction by next year in its first draft of an agreement for COP26.
The draft text, which can be read in full here, is published just two days before talks at the COP are scheduled to end and includes a preliminary draft of the cover decision to be reached by the participating countries as put forward by the COP26 president, the UK’s Alok Sharma.
The text includes a raft of carefully worded commitments ranging across areas such as science, adaptation, finance, mitigation and collaboration, which will now be the subject of two more days of negotiations.
It states that there is “alarm and concern” that warming of around 1.1 degrees Celsius has been caused to date and calls for renewed urgency and increased ambition across mitigation, adaption and finance this decade to “address the gaps in the implementation of the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement”.
Central to this is a number of commitments included within the section of the agreement related to mitigation, notably a decision to establish a work programme to urgently scale-up measures during the 2020s alongside urging parties to “revisit and strengthen” 2030 targets included within national determined contributions (NDCs) by 2022.
It also calls upon parties to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.
The draft text goes on to emphasise the need to mobilise climate finance necessary to achieve goals established within the Paris Agreement – the noted US$100 billion figure – and to include “significantly enhanced support for developing countries”.
Support for developing countries and the need for the energy transition to be just and equitable have been a consistent theme throughout the COP26 summit.
