What happened at Cop26 – day 12 at a glance.

 Extract from The Guardian

Cop26

Summary of the main developments on the 12th day of the UN climate summit in Glasgow.

• What is Cop26 and why does it matter? The complete guide

Today was the final scheduled day of talks on tackling climate change at Cop26 in Glasgow.

Tom Levitt

Sat 13 Nov 2021 06.07 AEDT

Last modified on Sat 13 Nov 2021 06.25 AEDT

Overnight we heard from key architects of the Paris climate deal [the last major UN climate agreement in 2015] that Cop26 targets were too weak to stop disaster. The second draft text faced criticism by campaigners who called for world leaders to be much more ambitious.

Campaigners and civil society groups staged a walkout at the Cop26 venue condemning the legitimacy and lack of ambition of the 12-day conference. They put forward a People’s Declaration, outlining 10 demands from global north countries paying their climate debt to global targets on adaptation and loss and damage.

The Amazon is on the brink of a “catastrophic potential tipping point” from deforestation, degradation, wildfires and climate heating, according to an expert study. It found that crossing the tipping point could result in a permanent loss of rainforest and a rapid shift from rainforest to degraded dry ecosystems with lower tree cover.

Countries, including Norway and Costa Rica, have expressed opposition to the softening of the conference call to end fossil fuel subsidies in the latest draft statement. The statement includes the qualifier “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies, which allows countries who have fuel discounts for the poor or vulnerable – important in some countries.

Campaigners have called on Cop26 negotiators to agree a properly funded deal to pay towards the loss and damage already being suffered by the global south from climate heating. Rather than “donors”, rich industrialised countries should be called “polluters”, said one climate specialist from Bangladesh.

The least bit of surprising news of the entire conference was that the 6pm deadline for the talks to finish passed without an agreement being announced. Conference chair Alok Sharma has said there would be another round of talks and a revised statement later tonight. But don’t be surprised to find talks carry on into tomorrow or even Sunday.

And finally, Australia has won the “colossal fossil” award at Cop for its “appalling performance” at the climate talks, in a ceremony run by activists from Climate Action Network (CAN). They said the country’s approach had been, like the Australian outback, “a barren wasteland”. The US was second for a lot of “hot air” and blocking progress, and the UK was third for presiding over a “shambolic” Cop26 summit.