Global Climate Talks May Become Pandemic’s Next Victim

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. is assessing whether the coronavirius pandemic sweeping across the globe could threaten its plans to convene a critical climate summit later this year.

There can no longer be a “cast iron guarantee” that the United Nations climate meeting will take place as scheduled in Glasgow this November, U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

British organizers of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP26, have been trying to build momentum heading into the event after last year’s summit in Madrid ended in failure. The annual convention is where countries submit long-term pollution goals aimed at zeroing out greenhouse gases.

“It’s going to be a challenge, which is why we’ll keep striving to make it a reality, because obviously we’d rather avoid delaying if we possibly can,” Raab told a committee in parliament on Thursday.

Already the UN has said it won’t hold any face-to-face climate talks before the end of April in order to contain the coronavirus, according to Climate Change News. An EU-China climate summit due to take place at the end of the month has also been postponed. Those talks would be key in building the blocks needed for sucess at the main summit.

“We haven’t got to the stage where I can say we’ve given up on it,” Raab said, adding that the U.K. government is in constant contact with the UN, European Union and others.

“We’re all waiting to see right now quite what the timing is going to be on the coronavirus,” he said. “It is still possible as of today that it might be doable.”

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