United Nations. The treaty created a multinational task force that would

support the global response to the threat of climate change. Every year,

delegations from countries signed up to this convention gather for the

Conference of the Parties, more commonly known as COP.

So what happens at COP and does it really play a key role in the

global fight against climate change?

Nice wellies. You like the wellies? I put them on

especially for you. Not quite so sure about yours.  

We don't normally put wellies on in the countryside until at least October.

Well, these are like my city wellies. Yeah it shows.

You've got the dog as well so you're a proper country bumpkin.

Well don't tell everyone. What are we here to talk about,

why did you want to go on a walk with me? Well, we're going to talk about COP, and

I thought it would nice be out in nature considering it's an important

factor in everything to do with COP. Well, a very warm welcome to the

Ashdown forest. Shall we crack on? Yes.

It's the Squawk Box show with Karen Tso and myself

Steve Sedgwick and these are your headlines.

CNBC's Steve Sedgwick anchors Squawk Box Europe. He's also covered energy

for the last 20 years reporting from both OPEC meetings with the world's

biggest oil producers, to critical climate conferences such as COP21.

I wanted to ask him about the goings-on within COP and its

effectiveness in achieving the world's climate objectives.

For those of us who haven't been to COP, what's it like?

Stunningly intense. Heads of state in and out. Presidents, prime ministers.

You've got enormous entourages, a lot of people that are actually doing the

negotiations. You've got action advocates as well, the protesters

outside. You've got a security operation which is absolutely enormous.

The head of the negotiations in Paris once said to me and this is Christiana

Figueres, she said to me it as akin to herding cats. You've got basically all

walks of society all talking about one issue. This isn't like a G meeting where

you have a plethora of global issues. This is one issue, it's all about

climate change and affects all parts of society.

A year after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change came into force, the first COP meeting was held in Berlin,

Germany in March 1995. Since then, climate change has gone from a

fringe issue to a global priority.

Certain COPs have achieved landmark agreements. COP 3 in 1997 saw the

adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, which legally binds developed country parties

to emission reduction targets. And in 2015 at COP 21, the Paris Agreement

was born, arguably the most significant moment in COP's history.

Today the UNFCCC has near-universal membership. The 197 parties (196

countries plus the European Union) under the convention are treaty bound

to 'avoid dangerous climate change' and find

ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally.

What was the first COP you reported from?

Well, here's the thing. I've been to dozens of energy meetings over

the last decade but CNBC has actually only attended two COP

meetings in the last 12 years. Now the first was seen as a very

unsatisfactory outcome. That was the COP 15 that Geoff Cutmore went

to in Denmark. It just didn't work. You had antagonism between emerging

countries and the United States. There was nothing binding about

it but I went to the COP21 in Paris where a lot of the ills of

the previous meetings were addressed and actually it was

a very successful meeting because at the end of it you had the Paris

Agreement which was absolutely a seminal moment.

Every country signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement has agreed

to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees

above pre-industrial levels, with an aim for 1.5 degrees. To deliver

on these targets, signatories need to make money available in order to

adapt to the impact of climate change.

The Paris Agreement was far more binding than almost anything we'd

seen beforehand as well. You had this commitment to get to net zero

at some stage this century, but everyone was going to go about it

in their own way. There was going to be a mechanism where everyone

checks up on how they were progressing every five years.

That was supposed to be Glasgow 2020, but the pandemic put paid

to that and that's why this meeting, the Glasgow COP26 is absolutely pivotal.

191 Parties out of the 197 have ratified the Paris Agreement.

However, although the agreement is legally binding, the commitments

that countries have made to cut their emissions are not. These are known as

Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, and serve to only 'embody'

each country's efforts to reduce their emissions.

The UNFCCC's aim is to ratchet up individual commitments and therefore

the world's climate commitments over time.

The problem is the scientists have looked at what is being committed

to and what needs to be done and there is a disparity there as well.

Many scientists say that actually to get to 1.5 degree C a whole host of

commitments is needed from these parties.

That's even if they do what they said they were

going to do back in Paris in 2015.

So if the Paris Agreement is the best thing to come out of COP's more than

25-year history and it's still unable to limit

global warming, then how effective really is COP?

Well for a start Tom, it was always seen as a starting point as well.

It wasn't the be all and end all. This is where we start from in really

getting serious about climate change, but let me give you a good example.

One of the most important countries in the world, the United States,

the president pulled them out of the Paris Agreement, but in the

meantime the U.S. carried on. The federal states carried on, the

corporations carried on, so the process was going on, regardless

of who was the incumbent at the White House and I think that shows

the worth of the Paris Agreement and despite the rankle we're seeing

on geo-political stages, the Chinese, the United States, all the other big

emitters they're still moving towards plans and

hopefully better plans at COP26.

But as each country has its own socio and economic characteristics,

I imagine some countries are a little bit more ambitious, shall

we say, with their climate change goals?

I think the ambitions there but it's just the reality of what's

going on in the emerging world compared to the developed world.

The developed world has the finance to do this. It has already

industrialised. Whereas a lot of the emerging nations, India being

the great case in point, it was in 2015, it will be in 2021, It

doesn't have the same socio-economic position as you say, it doesn't have

the same wealth, it's not at the same stage of industrialisation.

So it's very important for the western nations to appreciate

that actually these other nations to come along the same journey, to

make those same commitments needs a hell of a lot of finance.

As hosts of COP26, the U.K. takes a leading diplomatic role in

encouraging countries to commit to more ambitious 2030 emissions

reductions targets that align with reaching net

zero by the middle of the century.

Alongside these emission reduction targets, the UN hopes that COP26

will commit countries to: accelerate the phase out

of coal, curtail deforestation, speed up the switch to electric  

vehicles and encourage investment in renewables.

Countries at the same time will need to adapt to protect communities

and natural habitats, mobilize at least $100 billion in climate finance

from developed countries per year and work together to, amongst other things,

finalize the Paris Rulebook which makes the Paris Agreement operational.

A report released before the COP26 summit said that only one country —

The Gambia — is on course to meet the 1.5 degree Celsius target, while

momentum has stalled for other countries such as Singapore and Russia.

Each signatory has their own targets for

ending their contribution to climate change.

Here in the U.K., the government's independent adviser on global

warming, has said the country needs plant around 100 million trees a

year to achieve its net-zero carbon emissions goal by 2050.

Many scientists are saying that actually now is the last chance saloon. We have

to really move in the next five, certainly the next ten years to

avert the worst impacts of climate change and to

try and keep the change to below 1.5 degrees centigrade.

And there is another crisis as well which is the global pandemic. Many

countries see the recovery from the pandemic and averting climate change

and the worst parts of that climate change actually as the same strategy.

A lot of investment in digitisation, a lot of investment in renewables

as well. It's a unique opportunity for the world to get together and

actually have a cohesive plan rather than dribs and drabs left right and

centre for what many people think is the greatest and

existential crisis of our time.

It turns out that getting 20,000 or so people to meet at COP to

discuss saving the planet can also harm the planet. According to the

Polish environment ministry a UN summit emits about 60,000 tonnes

of CO2 – roughly the same emitted by 7000 homes in a year. Unsurprisingly

aviation makes up more than 80% of those emissions.

But COP says it will offset the damage by

planting enough trees to soak up those emitted gases.