Inside COP26

IT MAY SOUND EXOTIC TO BE travelling to Lima, Marrakech or Paris for a climate summit, but only one thing is certain about an event like this: it will involve two weeks of very hard work and very little sleep. Catching a few hours’ rest on an uncomfortable plastic bench while waiting for documents and agreements to come through; drinking terrible coffee from a machine to stay awake; laughing through the tiredness with colleagues and fellow negotiators from all over the world; spending long hours in small, hot rooms arguing over details, words and punctuation that signal what countries will do in the face of climate breakdown. These are just some of my memories of COP, the international climate summit that takes place every November.

This year, at least, I won’t have to travel far. As you have no doubt heard, the UK, in partnership with Italy, is hosting the 26th event – hence COP26 – and it will be held in Glasgow.

So what’s it all about? Well, COP stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’,