The Road to COP26
The annual Conference of the Parties, or COP, is an annual event that brings governments, business leaders, activists, and other groups together with a singular purpose: reviewing how climate change is being addressed domestically and internationally in order to plan some actionable, systemic, and collective steps to fight it.
These annual summits serve as the main decision making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an agreement made by 197 countries to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous climate change.
The first COP meeting was held in Berlin, Germany in 1995, and with the exception of last year, one is held every year. While there have been many crucial pieces of progress in the fight against climate change made at these summits throughout the decades, this year’s event is of particular importance. To understand why, you first need to understand what happened at COP21.
COP21, held in Paris in 2015, isn’t just near and dear to our hearts because that’s where we launched — it’s also when the world established the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty in which leaders pledged to limit global warming. The treaty was signed by 196 countries, included countries offering financial assistance to poorer countries to reduce emissions, and most importantly, established a goal to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
The Paris Agreement was a landmark deal in the multilateral climate change process because it represented the first time a binding agreement was put in place to bring all nations together under a common cause, unifying the planet to not only combat climate change, but adapt to its effects. The treaty is assessed every five years, which means COP26 is the first time the treaty will be revisited and that countries will need to show how they have met their national targets (NDC’s). Many believe this year’s COP is the last chance to keep hopes alive of limiting warming to 1.5°C, so with the world needing to limit global warming and time running out to do so, these meetings in Glasgow have never been more important.
And that sense of urgency is a key reason why we’re going to be here on the ground throughout the summit, speaking with leaders, policymakers, and fellow non-profits about the importance of carbon offsets, the need for increased integrity in the voluntary carbon market, and how Carbon Done Correctly can be a valuable tool in the fight against climate change.
There’s simply no time to waste — if the world is going to rise up to the standards we set for ourselves in 2015, we need to halve emissions within the next decade and become a net zero world by 2050. If we are to avoid dangerous climate change, we need every solution brought into play and deployed now at speed and at scale, especially those that create benefits for those in the most marginalized communities who are particularly susceptible to climate change’s impact. Carbon offsets are a part of those solutions.
We’re going to COP26 because while the voluntary carbon market (VCM) isn’t perfect, it has recognized its shortcomings and is quickly working to correct them. There is an increased focus on integrity, trust, and transparency in the marketplace, with a new governing body, comprising experts in the fields of finance and nature conservation, established to oversee and help build confidence in offsetting as a crucial tool in the journey to net-zero emissions.
We’re going to COP26 to let people know that carbon offsets aren’t a free pass to pollute. Reducing pollution from major polluting entities is going to require policy changes, governmental regulation, and investors helping shift funding away from fossil fuel based energy systems to support cleaner power and drive further societal behavior change. Good, quality offsets have nothing to do with polluters polluting.
We’re going to COP26 to remind the world that carbon offsets have come a long way in the last two decades — but we’re ready to make them even better by increasing their integrity even further. We know where the problems are, and our decades of experience in this field mean that we are uniquely positioned to help fix them. Guardrails are being strengthened, new standards for transparency are being implemented, and advances in technology are making it even easier for us to verify the efficacy and additionality of carbon projects via the VCM.
We’re going to COP26 because a successful Voluntary Carbon Market is one where buyers, and society in general, remain confident in the fact that offsets are delivering cuts in climate-causing emissions while benefiting communities on the front line. We are here to help build that confidence.
We know what Carbon Done Correctly means — at COP26, we’re going to make sure the rest of the world does as well.
