COP26 postponed until 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic

The decision to postpone the event was made in early April by representatives of the COP Bureau of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), with the UK and its Italian partners. The conference, which was expected to draw 26,000 attendees, is now likely to take place in 2021. 

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) says: ‘In light of the ongoing, worldwide effects of COVID-19, holding an ambitious, inclusive COP26 in November 2020 is no longer possible.’ 

COP26 President-Designate and Secretary of State for Energy Alok Sharma adds: ‘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. 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.’ 

UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa called the virus the ‘most urgent threat facing humanity today’. However, she also highlighted climate change as the most pressing long-term threat to civilisation as we know it. This is why, she argues, it is still necessary to continue ambitious planning for the energy transition. 

‘Soon, economies will restart,’ Espinosa says. ‘This is a chance for nations to recover better, to include the most vulnerable in those plans, and a chance to shape the 21st century economy in ways that are clean, green, healthy, just, safe and more resilient.’ 

Some pointed to the potential opportunities to be realised as the result of the delay. Mark Maslin, a Professor of Climatology at University College London, described the postponement as a possible boon for green planning: ‘Now we have time to prepare properly and learn lessons from the unprecedented global response to COVID-19 to how best to deal with climate change,’ he says. 

The Glasgow COP meeting had been hailed as the most important event for climate diplomacy since 2015 Paris conference. Governments were due to submit more ambitious climate plans to the UN ahead of this year’s meeting. So far, only four countries – the Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway and Moldova – have done so. 

Last year’s COP25 conference in Madrid was marked by stalled talks and deadlock over carbon accounting measures. It was hoped that dialogue could resume more productively in Scotland this autumn. Now, as the world sets about coping with an unprecedented pandemic and economic slowdown, conversations about climate are likely to take a different tone. 

‘Going back to business as usual is completely unacceptable: this pandemic shows there are huge lessons to be learned about the importance of listening to science and the need for urgent collective global action,’ says Greenpeace International Executive Director, Jennifer Morgan.