Government must spell out how they will measure climate success, says BEIS

The government should spell out how it will measure success at COP26, says the Business Energy and Industry Strategy (BEIS) Committee in an interim report published today (March 5). 

In the report, the committee highlights that so far the government has not provided details as to how success will be measured against each of its headline climate ambitions.

The success of COP26 will depend on effective diplomacy, however, according to the report, it remains unclear whether the COP26 Unit has been assigned a dedicated diplomatic team or the extent to which the diplomatic network is engaged in helping to achieve summit objectives.

Based on this, the report recommends that the government set out a clear list of ambitions, with a set of accompanying measures of success.

The report emphasises the need for the Government to show global leadership by taking decisive action on the UK’s domestic ambitions and recommends the Government accept in full the Climate Change Committee (CCC) sixth carbon budget advice and bring in the necessary secondary legislation as early as possible.

Darren Jones, chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee said: ‘COP26 this November must conclude with countries around the world setting out their road maps to delivering on the Paris Agreement targets set five years ago.

‘The British Government must put sufficient resource behind these global negotiations to ensure that agreements are reached at COP26 which both commit and help each country to make the required changes.

‘We have concluded that the current ‘themes’-based approach to COP26 is too broad, without clear measures for success, and that more focus needs to be given to the overriding necessity to agree deliverable policies that keep global temperature rises to as close to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels as possible.’

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