UWC GB 'Inside View' Zoom Series: 'COP26 - Is there really any point?'
Join UWC GB and a panel of alumni & experts for an informal evening discussion around COP26, Climate Change, and how UWC fits in!
In this informal session, join us in discussing and debating the upcoming COP26 climate change conference in the UK, as well as wider climate change and sustainability concerns and the role UWC has to play in all of it.
Many believe COP26 could be the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control. However, with previous conferences still yielding little in the way of clear action or results, is there really any point to COP26? What does 'success' look like for it? Can it yield more results than Paris or, to quote Greta Thunberg, will it be just more 'bla bla bla'?
We will be joined by UWC alumni experts from the field and will hear from range of perspectives on how important COP26 really is and how there may be other approaches to action on climate change available.
Zoom Details will be provided shortly before the event on this page and to all who register in advance. The session is free to attend and open to both UWC GB Members as well as other UWC Alums or friend of UWC.
Guest Speakers
Bernice Lee - (UWC AC '89)
Bernice is the Hoffmann Distinguished Fellow for Sustainability and Research Director - Futures at Chatham House and one of the UK's leading experts on the issues surrounding sustainability and climate change. Prior to her work at Chatham House, Bernice was the Head of Climate Change and Resource Security Initiatives at the World Economic Forum.
Guido Schmidt-Traub - UWC AC '91
Guido is current Partner at SystemIQ, a systems change company that partners with business, finance, policy-makers, and civil society to make economic systems truly sustainable. Prior to SystemIQ, Guido was Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an initiative launched by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2012 mobilizing scientific and technical expertise from academia, civil society, and the private sector in support of sustainable development and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.
WHAT IS COP 26?
The UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 October – 12 November 2021.
The COP26 summit will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
For nearly three decades the UN has been bringing together almost every country on earth for global climate summits – called COPs – which stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’. In that time climate change has gone from being a fringe issue to a global priority.
This year will be the 26th annual summit – giving it the name COP26. With the UK as President, COP26 takes place in Glasgow.
Not only is it a huge task but it is also not just yet another international summit. Most experts believe COP26 has a unique urgency.
To understand why, it’s necessary to look back to another COP:
The importance of the Paris Agreement
COP21 took place in Paris in 2015.
For the first time ever, something momentous happened: every country agreed to work together to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees and aim for 1.5 degrees, to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate and to make money available to deliver on these aims.
The Paris Agreement was born. The commitment to aim for 1.5 degrees is important because every fraction of a degree of warming will result in the loss of many more lives lost and livelihoods damaged.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to bring forward national plans setting out how much they would reduce their emissions – known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or ‘NDCs’.
They agreed that every five years they would come back with an updated plan that would reflect their highest possible ambition at that time.
Glasgow is the moment for countries to update their plans
The run up to this year’s summit in Glasgow is the moment (delayed by a year due to the pandemic) when countries update their plans for reducing emissions.
But that’s not all. The commitments laid out in Paris did not come close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, and the window for achieving this is closing.
The decade out to 2030 will be crucial.
So as momentous as Paris was, countries must go much further than they did even at that historic summit in order to keep the hope of holding temperature rises to 1.5 alive. COP26 needs to be decisive...