Alok Sharma MP, formerly Secretary of State for International Development, was appointed Secretary of State for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy, and also President of COP 26, on 13 February 2020.
COP 26 is a meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, due to take place in Glasgow in November 2020. It is expected to draw 30,000 delegates and 200 Heads of Government or senior ministers from around the world.
At an earlier ‘COP’, the French government reached the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2016, which committed the signatories to take actions to limit global temperatures rise to well below 2 degrees C, with every effort to got further to limit such a rise to 1.5 degrees C.
It took an enormous effort to achieve this Agreement, led by the French Foreign Minister, President and Environment Secretary and 200 French diplomats, with determined support from many other leaders and experts, including American, British, Indian, Chinese…
And yet, global emissions have not been limited as agreed, but continue to rise annually, while scientific reports proliferate on what this actually means in practice, from melting glaciers, polar ice caps, warming seas, extreme weather events, Australian bushfires.
COP 26 is supposed to be the UNFCC meeting where parties are called on to redouble their efforts, and to commit to much more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions. There is a huge job to be done, entrenched interests and obstacles to be overcome or circumvented, diplomatic and economic forces to be mobilised. The conference will take place shortly after the American election, and if re-elected, President Trump has undertaken to conclude his administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, with the initiative on climate change in America passing to states, mayors and corporations.
To date, we have heard that the UK government has sacked the first President of COP 26, and that the UK and Scottish governments have been squabbling about access to conference venues. All of this is now quite irrelevant, and needs to be put behind us. Alok Sharma has a huge task to accomplish in chairing this conference, and needs to the strong support of the full resources of government behind him to achieve the results required.