The Conference of the Parties (COP) was established with the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Since the first COP in 1995 headed by the environmental minister of Germany Angela Merkel, the way world leaders think about climate change has fundamentally changed. The arguably most groundbreaking contribution to this was the 2015 Paris Agreement, committing the world to limit global warming to well below 2° and to pursue effort towards a 1.5°C trajectory. The COP26 which took place between October 31st and November 12th in in Glasgow (Scotland, UK) has been described as the last chance to avert the most serious negative impacts of climate change. The current policies are likely to lead to global warming between 2.7 and 3.1°C by the end of the century, far off the 1.5°C trajectory.

The following sections present the main achievements of COP26 in getting the world on a Paris-aligned trajectory, structured along the four main goals.