COP26 Prez Alok Sharma opens summit

Glasgow: The COP26 summit is “our last best hope” to agree on implementing the Paris Agreement, which limits the rise in global temperatures and keeps the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius alive, summit President Alok Sharma said as he formally opened the climate conference in Glsgow on Sunday.

The Indian-origin Cabinet minister, who is leading the UK presidency of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework



Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC), has described his role as “shepherd-in-chief” of the two-week-long summit.

“I believe we can move negotiations forward and launch a decade of ever-increasing ambition and action... But we need to hit the ground running,” Sharma said, in his opening speech on Sunday, which marks the operational launch of the summit.