COP26 talks spill over into extra time amid disagreement over wording on fossil fuels

Published

4 years ago

November 12, 2021

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Talks to reach a climate deal at a United Nations summit in Glasgow will continue into Saturday afternoon, after a Friday deadline passed without an agreement.

COP26 president Alok Sharma has told delegates that revised documents for the agreements to be struck at the conference will be issued overnight, and be available by 8am on Saturday.

A short plenary meeting is to be held on Saturday morning, when Mr Sharma will introduce the documents, share his assessment of the state of the negotiations and set out proposed next steps.

Will they reach a deal? Crucial COP talks enter final stretch – follow live

He said he envisages a formal plenary in the afternoon to adopt the final decisions of COP26 and close the session on Saturday.

The original deadline for clinching a deal had been 6pm on Friday.

The UK presidency is desperately trying to bring consensus among the almost 200 nations involved before final agreements can be published.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson still believes “an ambitious outcome is in sight”, despite language around fossil fuels emerging as one of the talks’ sticking points.

In a readout of Mr Johnson’s call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday evening, a Downing Street spokeswoman said: “They discussed progress in the ongoing Cop26 negotiations in Glasgow and agreed that an ambitious outcome is in sight…

“The leaders committed to work together to help resolve outstanding issues in the talks and reach an agreement at Cop26 that works for all countries.”

While visiting a vaccination centre in Sidcup, south-east London earlier, the prime minister reiterated that the UK, as hosts of Cop26, were moving “heaven and earth” to get everyone to see the vital importance of agreement at the talks – to keep the prospect of limiting warming to 1.5C alive.

In the Paris Agreement in 2015, countries committed to limit temperature rises to “well below” 2C and try to limit them to 1.5C to avoid the most dangerous impacts of storms, droughts, crop failures, floods and disease.

Scientists have warned that keeping temperature rises to 1.5C requires global emissions to be cut by 45% by 2030, and to zero overall by mid-century.

But despite countries being required to update their action plans, known as nationally determined contributions, for emissions cuts up to 2030 in the run-up to Glasgow, the latest pledges leave the world well off track to meet the goal.

A call in the first agreement draft to “accelerate the phase-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels” – key to keeping 1.5C alive – survived a battering in the negotiations, though came out weakened, after facing resistance from fossil fuel majors like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The second draft, published Friday morning, calls upon parties to phase-out of “unabated” coal power and “inefficient” fossil fuel subsides.

Saudi Arabia appears to be pushing hard to remove any trace of fossil fuels in the COP26 text.

Senior Saudi Arabia negotiator Ayman Shasly told Sky’s climate change correspondent Hannah Thomas-Peter that the Paris agreement must be protected and reflected by Glasgow.

He said anything else is “unacceptable”. The Paris agreement does not contain references to fossil fuel.

Meanwhile, China and Saudi Arabia have resisted proposals for countries to ratchet up their climate action plans – known as NDCs – for the period to 2030 by the end of next year.

Although, the new version of the agreement “requests” countries to revisit and strengthen their plans for 2030 within the next year in line with the Paris temperature goal – seen as stronger language than the first draft which “urges” countries to do so.

Meanwhile, many developing countries called for more finance for poorer nations to develop clean energy and adapt to the changing climate.

The new draft includes a date of 2025 for developed countries to double the share of finance that is going to these nations.

As climate envoys aired their views on the latest draft, the EU’s Frans Timmermans said “without these concrete steps our targets will be meaningless”. John Kerry, representing the United States, said: “to feed the very problem we are here to try to cure… that’s a definition of insanity”.

However, neither called for the language to revert to its original, stronger form and the references may yet be watered down further in the final version.

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World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.