Will the UK's passive COP 26 strategy pay off?

Last month, in a now-deleted tweet, one of the United Kingdom’s climate negotiators weighed in on a Twitter discussion to back what is perceived as Britain’s hands-off approach ahead of COP 26, the global climate summit it is hosting in November. The tweet’s disappearance only added to an already murky image of the country’s strategy. Expectations are huge for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties. The goal is to chart the world’s path toward decarbonization by rethinking the functioning of our economies, while at the same time ensuring there is enough ambition and that the most vulnerable are not left behind. Experts say these are challenging tasks for the host country and the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened them further. But while the U.K. cannot do everything alone, they also said the presidency needs to step up its diplomatic game to avoid jeopardizing the summit’s outcome. At the moment, it appears to be seeing itself as a mere moderator of discussions. “Our job is to broker consensus, it's to hold space for more to be done,” Camilla Born, COP 26’s deputy director of strategy, said in a recent interview. “We can't define what the outcome is ourselves entirely, we have to create the space where others do that for us.” That space is destined ideally for big players like the United States, which has quickly picked up its efforts in international climate diplomacy with the new administration. While those kinds of coalitions are essential for the summit’s success, it’s also “risky” for the U.K. to rely on Washington to lead, “considering they’ve been out of the game for a long time,” said Alex Scott, climate diplomacy program leader at think tank E3G. From listening to acting A lot of the COP 26 action will take place before November. Countries are set to announce cranked-up commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home, with the collective objective of stopping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius — but these national contributions are decided domestically, way before world leaders reach Glasgow. Negotiations at COP will be centered around the Paris Agreement rule book, specifically the international trading of carbon credits. “Boris Johnson should lay out the vision for the summit. When you are the president of the COP and chair of the G-7, you are more in the driver’s seat.” --— Andrew Higham, climate expert That makes this COP summit different from previous ones, said Andrew Higham, a climate expert who drafted the historic Paris Agreement. “So much of what needs to happen is in the domain of national government and not in the domain of collectivity … There are collective outcomes, no doubt, but it is different, and hence the presidency is different,” Higham said. This partially explains the value of a shepherding role that avoids dictating outcomes and that invests in coalition-building and identifying where there’s room for consensus. But at some point, more leadership is required. “We are at the point now where the presidency should be moving from listening mode to one where they are more active and visionary,” Higham said. One of the issues is that the U.K. presidency took quite a long time to get organized and “it’s not clear that the COP 26 is really a priority today for the ministers at the top of the government,” said Richard Black, senior associate at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a London-based think tank. That’s in part because of the pandemic that swept the world and shifted attention on medical emergencies. Scott at E3G echoed these thoughts, pointing out that “we live in unprecedented times and face-to-face diplomacy has been strained,” which can affect the quality of talks. That said, the U.K.’s lack of focus on COP 26 was already being noticed before the pandemic kicked off. A key opportunity The U.K. has outlined five themes it wants to achieve collective agreement on at the summit, by bringing together government, businesses, and civil society groups. These are: adaptation and resilience, climate finance, clean road transport, energy transition, and nature. “The five areas are logical and the U.K. has been convening conversations on this, but you would expect at least the shape of some agreements to be clearer,” Black said. “You have to know what you are aiming to build that moment for.” The U.K. announcement in March that it is cutting official development assistance also “doesn’t place the COP 26 host in a good position to build trust and credibility with climate-vulnerable countries,” Scott said. “That aid cut really challenges the U.K.’s credibility to leverage the other funder countries.” Still, as this year’s chair of the G-7 group of nations, Black said, the U.K. has a “neat opportunity” to be much more active in pressing high-income countries to deliver on its currently unfulfilled commitment of mobilizing $100 billion in climate finance annually for the world. The Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a series of negotiations to prepare for COP this week, will also test how far a climate coalition has been built. “[Prime Minister] Boris Johnson should lay out the vision for the summit. When you are the president of the COP and chair of the G-7, you are more in the driver’s seat, and I think that’s what’s expected,” Higham said. He added: “The U.K. has a fantastic diplomatic machine, they’ve been talking to countries all over the world for over a year. We know what the sticking points are — that’s where the U.K. needs to step in and help.” Otherwise, “we could risk seeing less than this year had potential to deliver,” Scott said.