Developing countries recently laid out their demands ahead of the key climate change summit COP26 in November in Glasgow.
A key demand is that rich countries move faster to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, alongside providing financial assistance to poorer nations to cope with the escalating climate crisis.
COP26 looks set to be the most important meeting on climate change since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. During the first two weeks of November, delegates from all countries in the world will gather in Glasgow, to discuss ways to further increase climate action.
Over 100 developing countries’ governments said the COP26 talks need to deliver help to the communities already impacted by climate-driven extreme weather. Delegates will be under more pressure than ever before to make faster changes as the crisis grows.
Governments are yet to finalise precisely how the Paris Agreement will be implemented, as well as make good on a 2009 promise to give vulnerable nations $100 billion per year to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
“Despite Covid understandably taking the headlines, climate change has been getting worse over the past year as emissions continue to rise and the lives and livelihoods on the frontline suffer,” Sonam P Wangdi of Bhutan, the chair of the least developed countries (LDC) group, said in a statement. “Richer countries, who have caused this problem, have to take responsibility.”
The LDC group published a list of demands ahead of COP26. They are calling for developed countries to strengthen the plans for cutting their emissions this decade, provide $100 billion a year in climate finance, help countries adapt to an extreme climate, bring the Paris Agreement into full effect and contribute to loss and damage to poor countries from the impacts of climate change.
