Post COP26 — New Rules, New Mindset, New Economy

"There's a whole world adjusting to climate change which is not captured at COP26"

The summit in Glasgow was very different from previous ones  — there was more at stake, more pressure and more noise from the outside world. Since the Paris meeting, the whole process has been changed and is now also focusing on bottom-up initiatives in parallel to top down - as opposed to only top down initiatives and regulations. This has made the current meetings more promising than the ones before. 

Bottom-up vs top-down 

Until Paris in 2015, the focus was on selected “bad guys” who needed to lower their emissions. It was difficult to define who were bad and who weren’t and it became a very sensitive topic politically. The system collapsed in 2009 in Copenhagen and instead a new bottom-up process was built, where every party has obligations but not necessarily the same ones. Plus, companies, cities and regions played a much bigger role in it. “We’re all in the same boat, everyone has the potential to collaborate in mitigating and combating climate change” - says Sverker Jagers. 

A lot of companies realised that if they from the start set their ambitions high enough and developed technologies, strategies and ideas further and faster, the bigger their chance would be to be backed up by regulations and policies set during the climate summit. It also put additional pressure on the politicians and negotiators.  

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“We’re all in the same boat, everyone has the potential to collaborate in mitigating and combating climate change”

Article 6 

At COP21 in Paris, the parties came to a successful agreement called Article 6 which is about how to reduce emissions in a cost-effective way. In Glasgow, they needed to finalise how countries can trade emissions and who gets to count them. “David Attenborough was there and said the one number that is important is the one of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and Article 6 is exactly about that” — says Åsa Löfgren. 

One big difference between Copenhagen and Paris was the number of commitments and pledges from countries, cities, companies and regions. Want to learn more about the most important outcomes from the summit? Download the key takeouts from COP26 here. 

Click the image to download the key takeouts.

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