At the UN climate conference in Glasgow, resolutions are emerging with a call to phase out coal and accelerate climate protection measures. The new draft of the COP26 framework decision published on Saturday morning continues to call for states to turn away from coal and subsidies for fossil fuels, albeit in a weaker form.
In addition, the new negotiating texts continue to call on the states to review their national climate targets by 2022 instead of by 2025.
Hours of debate about grants
The conference can only be expected to end on Saturday afternoon at the earliest. This was announced by the advisor to the British COP Presidency, Camilla Born, on Twitter. Hours of debate about the global stop signal for coal and about more aid payments to poor countries had thwarted the conclusion of the summit. The planned end was originally Friday evening.
In the evening, amid the halting negotiations, the heads of government of Great Britain and Italy, Boris Johnson and Mario Draghi, also spoke up. After a phone call, both said that progress had to be made with the so far inadequate commitments by the states to reduce their emissions of climate-damaging greenhouse gases. They wanted to help bring COP26 to a positive conclusion “in these critical final hours”.
Unanimity required
All conferences of the past years have been extended to the weekend. At the end of the mammoth meeting with around 40,000 delegates, around 200 countries have to unanimously pass the final text.
The German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze had recently expressed herself cautiously optimistic. There was already good progress on the table, said the SPD politician. She has already announced that for the first time in the history of the world climate conference there will be a chance of mentioning the coal phase-out in a final text. That is a “paradigm shift”. But: “We are not yet satisfied,” admitted Austria’s Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens).
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