U.N. Climate Summit Postponed To 2021 Amid Pandemic Fears
The United Nations on Wednesday postponed its annual climate summit from November to mid-2021 over fears that the global coronavirus pandemic won’t be safely contained by the end of the year.
The U.N.’s climate body and the British government ― which was slated to host the 26th Conference of the Parties, or COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, from Nov. 9 to 18 ― faced mounting pressure to cancel the event after public officials around the world put severe restrictions on travel and movement within their own borders in a bid to keep COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, from spreading.
The move, widely expected for days, was confirmed Wednesday afternoon in press release from the British government.
“The world is currently facing an unprecedented global challenge and countries are rightly focusing their efforts on saving lives and fighting COVID-19. That is why we have decided to reschedule COP26,” Alok Sharma, the United Kingdom’s energy minister and COP26 president, said in a statement. “We will continue working tirelessly with our partners to deliver the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis and I look forward to agreeing a new date for the conference.
The U.N. also delayed a smaller gathering of climate negotiators in Bonn, Germany, from June to fall of this year. The main November conference ― the longest-running event in U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s history ― has yet to be rescheduled, but is expected to take place by the middle of next year.
At the summit, top diplomats and officials were scheduled to hammer out details on how to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement — the historic, if largely unenforceable, pact in which nearly every nation on Earth agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions in hopes of preventing average temperatures from soaring above a catastrophic 2 degrees Celsius.
Few countries ― and none of the world’s largest emitters ― have come close to meeting the more ambitious goals...
