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The UN Climate Change Conference is underway - this is what has happened

February 18, 2022
Photo: Number 10 - Flickr/Creative Commons.
Photo: Number 10 - Flickr/Creative Commons.
The UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, concludes on November 12. However, much has already been agreed and signed. Read here about what has happened so far.

So far, there has been some turbulence surrounding the UN climate summit in Glasgow. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have partly characterized the news reporting, and Greta Thunberg has called the meeting "a PR event where leaders give beautiful speeches and fine promises", reports SVT.

However, new progress has also been made in the global sustainability issue in some areas.

Around 40 countries have now signed a coal power agreement, which means that those countries have committed to phasing out coal power. However, the USA, China, India and Australia, which are the world's largest producers of coal power, have chosen to stand outside the agreement.
The terms are that the richer countries must be able to reach the goal of phasing out by 2030, and the poor countries will have an additional ten years to achieve the goals.

Deforestation has previously been a hot topic and also considered fruitless. Already at a UN meeting in New York in 2014, a majority of countries promised to stop deforestation by 2030, but this has proven to be fruitless. In Glasgow, over 100 countries have signed agreements to stop deforestation, which represents 90 percent of the world's forests, according to SVT. Brazil, Congo-Kinshasa and Indonesia are three large forest countries that have signed the agreement - however, the latter have questioned the terms of the agreement.

In addition, 450 companies in the financial market have signed agreements with a promise to convert to green energy and work with the ambition to reach the 1.5 degree target from the Paris Agreement. The companies that have signed control 40 percent of the world's assets.

The climate summit will continue during the week and conclude on November 12 after just over two weeks of long negotiations. The goal of the meeting is to negotiate how the Paris Agreement should be implemented in practice, writes SVT.

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