The eyes of the world will turn to Glasgow on Sunday, as the largest gathering of global leaders ever assembled on British soil begins, writes Caitlin Allen.
The event runs for 12 days with up to 25,000 guests attending. World leaders will be joined by tens of thousands of negotiators, government officials, businessmen and women, journalists and climate activists such as Sir David Attenborough and, needless to say, Greta Thunberg. Yet crucially, leaders from some of the highest-emitting countries will be absent: neither Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro nor Russian President, Vladimir Putin will be there. China’s President, Xi Jinping, will tune in via video link. Although the UK is hosting the gathering under the presidency of the former business secretary, Alok Sharma, the event is in partnership with Italy. While Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi is chairing a pre-COP G20 meeting in Rome this weekend, the lack of credit given to the Italians for their role in the summit has gone down badly in Rome. However, once the real negotiations begin over achieving net zero carbon, it’s more likely that Draghi will have the the upper hand as Johnson will be hard-pushed to match the Italian’s negotiating expertise. Read Robert Fox for more. But what exactly can we expect from COP26?
