COP26 Round Up of the Long Weekend: Youth Day, Protests, and further negotiations

Round up of COP26 Youth Day (5^th November) and a weekend of further protests and negotiations (6-7^th).

Cambridge Researcher Natalie Jones is reporting for The Earth Negotiations Bulletin. In their round up of Youth Days’ (5^th) main proceedings and their highlights of the Saturday (6^th) , the bulletin highlighted ongoing negotiations focussing upon:

• Finance - extensive discussions centred on the new collective quantified goal on climate finance. A specific number isn’t aimed to be settled in Glasgow, rather, establishing a process through which countries decide how much finance developed countries (and those able and willing) will provide and mobilise. On the Saturday, developing countries called for climate finance to be of better quality and quantity. It was emphasised climate finance should not be in the form of loans which increase vulnerable and poor countries’ debt burdens, and that the USD 100 billion per year by 2020 goal has not yet been met.
• Adaptation - many of the agenda items focused upon supporting developing countries in implementing national planning processes for bettering resilience and decreasing vulnerability to climate change effects. Developing countries are disproportionately affected given low to negligible contributions to global emissions.
• Loss and damage - referring to permanent, detrimental effects of climate change, this agenda item’s negotiations tried to consider how to correlate diverse communities of practice working on areas like disaster risk reduction to support developing countries.
• The Saturday included the closing plenaries of Subsidiary bodies who undertake technical work in the first week of COPs. There are limits to what technical bodies can achieve, sometimes requiring political-level guidance to guide technical rules. Such issues are forward to the second work, and COP26’s have included:
  • Article 6 (co-operative approaches; transparency; loss and damage; response measures; adaptation and; common time frames for national determines contributions.

Other events around the venue also highlighted included:

• On the Friday, the ‘Youth Statement from the 16^th Conference of Youth’ was unveiled in Youth NGO’s event ‘Unifying for Change: The Global Youth Voice at COP26’. Most keenly, it demands youth’s meaningful and active involvement in decision making processes. It was signed by over 40,000 youth representatives, inputted from 2000 organisations from 130 countries.
• Former US Vice-President Al Gore opened an event titled ‘Destination 2030: Making 1.5°C a Reality’, focussing upon the need for radical transparency to match up pledges and actions.
• Lord Adair Turner, Energy Transition Council, presented initial estimates of COP26 pledges, finding IF they are realized they would lead to deduction of 9 of the needed 22 Gigatons of C02 equivalent to keep 1.5°C in sight.
• On the Saturday, an estimated 150,000 people marched through the streets of Glasgow for climate action.

For more detail, read their full daily report for November 5^th and November 6^th.

Follow Natalie Jones on twitter for live updates and our socials for coverage from across the Cambridge Community:

• Instagram: @Cambridgezero

• Twitter: @CambridgeZero

Student Rosa Prosser was also in attendance along with her camera and has produced many beautiful shots from the protests on Saturday and the Green Zone on Sunday which we will continue to share in the next few weeks. Here are two of her Green Zone shots:

Back in Cambridge, the weekend saw numerous COP26 screenings and the chance for students to get involved many miles away from the negotiating Halls. On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, Darwin hosted two COP26 Green Zone screenings. The first entitled ‘Climate Justice, Education and Gender Equality: Targeting the connections’ and the second, ‘Green Careers Pathway event’.

The Green Careers pathway event was streamed from COP26 and included the final Episode of Rosa Posser’s films entitled ‘Careers to solve the climate crisis’, produced during her internship with Cambridge Zero this summer. Watch the films here, or in-person followed by a Q&A Panel with Rosa and interviewees at Wolfson Hall, Churchill College on Wednesday 10^th November, 5-6pm.

If you would like to be involved with our COP26 coverage or have any questions, please email Ella Palmer, ep541@cam.ac.uk.