by Ben Wilson

Each year, more and more climate induced disasters cause devastation across the planet, destroying lives and livelihoods. In July and August hundreds of people lost their lives due to flooding in north-western Europe, Turkey and China’s Henan province. South Sudan is facing its worst food crisis since independence and Madagascar is said to be on the brink of the first ‘climate change induced famine’.

In August 2021, the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report has put this beyond doubt, providing extensive irrefutable evidence that the intensity and frequency of these events is the result of climate change and that the Global South will be most affected. When part two of this report is published next year, it is expected to paint an even starker picture of the human and environmental costs of these disasters, providing further scientific evidence of a moral catastrophe.

In just a few weeks’ time, world leaders from across the world will come together on the banks of the Clyde to discuss how to address this greatest crisis of our times. COP26 is the 26th ’Conference of the Parties’ to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Every country in the world is ‘party’ to the UNFCCC, and with Joe Biden’s election, every country is now party to the 2015 Paris Agreement which it created.