On Thursday 13th February we had a bonus Reuben Tuesday Talks event, co-organised with the Oxford Climate Research Network (OCRN) and Oxford Net Zero - a Tuesday talk on a Thursday, which really confused my internal clock. The speaker was Lord Alok Sharma, who has previously been the UK Secretary of State for International Development (July 2019 - February 2020) and for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (February 2020 – January 2021). However, the talk he gave at Reuben was about his experience as the President of United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasgow in 2021.
When asked who had been to a COP before, a surprising (to me, at least) number of people in the room put their hands up. Climate change is certainly of one the greatest challenges facing our society today; it is an issue that spans political parties and generations, and one which is of great interest to many students and staff at Reuben and the wider university community.
Lord Sharma started his talk with an introduction to the Conferences of Parties (COPs). While COP is often used to refer to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) annual conference, other COPs exist, with topics covering a range of important global issues (like biodiversity). The UNFCCC was ratified in 1994 and COP1 was held in Berlin in 1995. Since then, the conference has been held annually with key moments including the Kyoto protocol (1997) and the Paris agreement (2015). At the latter, 196 parties agreed to keep the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C or ideally 1.5°C.
COP26 was held between 31st October and 13th November 2021. However, for the COP president (and for many of those in attendance) the work began much earlier: beginning negotiations and trying to lay a foundation before the conference. But in the end, it comes down to the extremely busy two-week event. Lord Sharma described it as like a game of Jenga: one wrong move and the whole thing can come tumbling down - a very high stakes game. Some of the headlines of the conference were accelerating the move to renewable energy, reducing deforestation and increasing climate finance. However, one of the primary ambitions of the conference was to have countries agree to ending the use of coal and other fossil fuels, the major contributors to climate change. However, as the end of the conference approached, disagreements arose, leading to a change of wording from ‘phase out’ to ‘phase down’ of fossil fuel use. While frustrating, this was the first time fossil fuels had been specifically mentioned in the COP agreement. If the pledges made during COP26 are met, then it is predicted that warming would be kept below 1.8°C. But, that is quite a big ‘if’.
There were some recurring topics throughout the evening: financing climate change efforts, maintaining trust between nations and over time, and conflicts of interest for negotiators who must balance their country’s needs with the wider effort of reducing planetary warming. These and the discussion topics, such as ‘should it have taken 26 years to get to 'phasing down' fossil fuels’ and topics for the next COP, kept conversations flowing over a delicious fried chicken dinner.
The evening was finished with some thoughts from two students. Doris Agbevivi was a negotiator for Ghana at several COPs and she spoke of how during very long days they would negotiate over wording and the challenge of balancing climate activism and a country’s economic needs. She called on more young people to get involved in COP, given that they will be the people who will have to deal with the consequences of climate change. This was echoed by George Carew-Jones, a youth activist who has also attended a number of COPs. He described how the conference is a difficult environment to work in. He highlighted that young people can help provide motivation for action on climate, but that the older generations at the conference also care strongly about the outcomes.
This talk has certainly come at an interesting time. 2024 was the warmest year on record: the global average surface temperature reached 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels. Donald Trump has again taken the United States out of the Paris agreement. Sometimes it feels like there is no hope, but perhaps it is best to think of this as a call to action.
If you are interested in finding out more about the COP26 conference you can read:
