Congleton Sustainability Group and Congleton Town Council are holding a Climate Festival Week of events and Green Fayre to highlight to our community how important the COP26 negotiations are to us all and what each and everyone of us can do in our daily lives to reduce our carbon footprint. To that end we are planning to base the Festival Week around the key themes of our soon to be launched eLearning ‘Sustainable Living in Congleton’ course, namely Energy, Water, Travel, Waste and Food.
Specifically, the Saw Mill will be holding apple pressing demonstrations during the week.
The Green Fayre will be held on Saturday 30th October between 10am and 3pm with stalls and presentation space on Congleton High Street. The High Street will be closed to traffic. The monthly Makers Market will be held at the same time in the town centre, same day maximising the potential footfall, weather permitting! There will be over 30 stalls.
COP26 stands for the 26th meeting of the Conference of the Parties that signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. 197 nations (Parties) signed up to the UNFCCC Treaty to ‘prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system’ in 1992. The Treaty puts the onus on developed countries to lead the way. The COP is the decision-making body and meets every year (but cancelled last year).
There have been three subsequent treaties, of which The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Copenhagen Accord of 2009 both failed to deliver. However the Paris Agreement of 2015 was a success with every nation pledging to constrain emissions so as to reach net zero by 2050 and the richer nations re-pledging to provide $100 billion a year to help the poorest countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.
BUT current climate pledges are not enough to meet either of the Paris goals. Current warming is +1.2°C., increasing by 0.2°C. each decade. With current policies global warming will be 2.9°C. by 2100, which spells complete disaster.
COP26 is the first COP after the deadline whereby all nations agreed to ratchet up their nationally determined contributions and communicate their long-term strategies for achieving net-zero emissions and for the $100bn a year to help poorer countries to be paid.
COP26 is therefore incredibly important for the future of the planet.