COP26: How will success be measured at this year’s climate summit?

Making a final assessment of the progress achieved over the two weeks of the COP26 talks in Glasgow will be complex.

Making a final assessment of the progress achieved over the two weeks of the COP26 talks in Glasgow will be complex. Unlike past climate summits, the event won’t deliver a new treaty or one big “win.”

Rather, it will attempt to produce a myriad of smaller victories – from the formal U.N. negotiations on the Paris Agreement, and from the new climate pledges that countries, companies and investors announce during the conference.

Its success will be judged on whether all those can together keep the 1.5C goal alive.

The gap is huge. Scientists say capping warming at 1.5C would require global emissions to plummet 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels, and reach net zero by 2050. Countries’ current pledges would see emissions soar by 16% by 2030.

COP26 will use three levers to attempt to steer the world towards 1.5C.

First, it will devise a plan for how countries will accelerate their emissions reduction pledges in future years.

COP26 will almost certainly not deliver enough pledges to put the world firmly on course for 1.5C. But a credible deal to ramp up ambition more frequently in the coming years could at least keep it alive.

Denmark and Grenada have been put in charge of drawing up options for this, and Britain is considering a proposal that would require countries to come back with new, more ambitious pledges as early as 2023.