Alok Sharma takes on mantle of leading Cop26 deliberations

Ceremony puts the UK in the chair of the global climate negotiations in Glasgow

British politician Alok Sharma took on the formal role of leading the Cop26 climate negotiations for the next two weeks on Sunday, as warnings rang out that the lights are flashing red for failure to deliver meaningful progress.

The president of the Cop26 climate summit called on countries to work together to avert the most devastating effects of global warming, as he opened the meeting.

“Because of the pandemic we postponed Cop26 by a year,” he said.

“But during that year climate change did not take time off and the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report in August was a wake up call for all of us.

"It made clear the lights are flashing red on the climate dashboard.”

Mr Sharma recalled the framework agreement sealed at Paris in 2015 with a view to holding the global temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and aim to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

He said the world could seize enormous opportunities for green growth.

“Where Paris promised, Glasgow delivers,” Mr Sharma said. “We can move the negotiations forward and we can launch a decade of ever increasing ambition and action.

“We can seize the enormous opportunities for green growth for good green jobs, the cheaper, cleaner power.”

Even with progress, climate change will cause losses and parts of the world would still disappear under water even if Cop26 achieves its climate target.

The UN conference in Glasgow gets under way on Monday with a summit of world leaders. The UK is pressing governments to sign up to prevent global temperatures from rising, as under the Paris Agreement.

Mr Sharma said it will be a “tough ask” to reach the objective, with the global political situation “more difficult” than when “historic” agreements were struck in Paris in 2015.

The former business minister said he hopes political leaders emerge from the two weeks of talks with “credibility”, having “kept 1.5°C alive".

But he gave a warning that even if that ambition is achieved, it will not put a stop to rising sea levels caused by global warming swamping some countries.