The Conference of the Parties on climate change within the United Nations, the so-called COP 26, ended on Saturday 13 November in Glasgow. Expectations were high and the international pressure of civil society made their voices heard among the leaders who found themselves negotiating during the Conference, reiterating that there is no more time to postpone crucial decisions, essential to limit the temperature increase. at 1.5 ° C compared to the pre-industrial era. For many, however, the result has failed to meet expectations and disappointed those who expected that decisive step towards a complete phase out, or a non-gradual interruption of the extraction and use of fossil fuels in the years to come. The emblematic example is coal, unfortunately not definitively removed from usable resources but the subject of a gradual reduction - the so-called phase down - above all thanks to India, tacitly supported by Australia and China. In fact, these countries have also managed to avoid the commitment concerning the blocking of subsidies directed at the extraction and use of this raw material, definitely turning back the clock. However, dozens of texts have been approved, which often postpone the decisions and commitments to be ratified to the next Conferences of the parties. Among the most important there are the following:
• Ndcs, i.e. voluntary commitments to reduce emissions. In this regard, it has been established that starting from 2025 countries will have to adopt multilaterally shared commitments for the reduction of CO2 emissions over a period of 10 years. However, given the lack of unanimous consensus on 2025 as the starting date, the presentation of its commitments was also granted from 2030, thus essentially allowing everyone to stall for 5 years more.
• Climate finance, relating to the already feared possibility by the most industrialized countries of creating a fund for the climate emergency directed to developing countries, which are also those who are paying the highest price for global warming. However, nothing clear and established has been reached and ad hoc meetings have been set up to discuss it between 2022 and 2024.
• Loss and damage, contextual to the theme of climate finance. This instrument aims to establish economic compensation from the more industrialized countries towards those that are paying the most for the consequences. Here too, COP 26 has postponed the decision to future summits.
• BOGA - Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, or rather the creation of an alliance to lead the countries that decide to be part of it towards an end to the use of oil and gas from the energy mix used by individual nations. At the moment it has been signed only by 11 parties, and not only by nations. There are 3 forms of membership that imply different degrees of involvement regarding the obligations: Core member, where one undertakes to no longer give concessions for oil and gas production and exploration activities; Associate member, to undertake to cut subsidies for gas and oil (both abroad and nationally); and Friend member, in order to align the use of gas and oil to comply with the Paris Agreement. At the moment Italy has joined as a signatory by choosing the less demanding type of Friend membership.
Opinions on the results obtained by this COP are conflicting: some entities such as the International Energy Agency have expressed themselves positively, affirming a temperature limitation within the century to 1.8 ° C, roughly in line with the provisions of the Paris Agreements; others such as the Climate Action Tracker, which monitors and calculates the climate effects of decarbonisation commitments based on the agreements, predicts 2.4 ° C warming by the end of the century. It is therefore not even clear whether the commitments made will be sufficient or not to meet the 1.5 ° C target. This conclusion has been postponed to the next COP27 of 2022 in Egypt.