It’s a new year but the challenges around climate change remain the same.
Many scheduled events across 2026 will influence whether progress is made or the problems get worse. Here are a few for the calendar.
United States leaves Paris
One of Donald Trump’s first acts when he became president for a second term in January last year was to announce the United States’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
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It takes a year for a withdrawal to come into effect so on January 27th the landmark climate pact is officially down to 196 signed members.
The date is more symbolic than practical as Trump has already taken a wrecking ball to his country’s climate laws and commitments.
But the last time he pulled the US out, climate campaigners began counting down the clock to his successor’s return to the agreement.
This time, there is less hope that the US will rejoin when Trump leaves the White House, or if it does, that it will be able to make up for the ground lost during its absence.
Another attempt at a plastics treaty
After failed talks on ending plastic pollution late in 2025, a meeting takes place in Geneva in February to put in place a new top table team to lead discussions with a view to arranging further negotiations throughout the year.
With microplastics turning up in almost every habitat and living organism, the need for a drastic reduction in conventional plastics production is critical.
But plastics aren’t just a long-life material – they also prolong the life of the oil industry.
Negotiators have late 2026 in mind as the time frame for agreeing a treaty but the obstacles to consensus – a hugely powerful commercial lobby – that stymied a deal last year still remain.
Security or defence?
The 62nd Munich Security Conference also takes place in February and while its focus is not climate [although an unsafe climate is a major threat to global security], what happens there will influence policy and spending decisions by governments around the world.
A sudden need to swell defence budgets followed last year’s conference and the European Commission, in setting out its priorities for 2026, refers to “a growing and evolving threat landscape”.
“This is why security will cut through all the work of the Commission in the year ahead,” it says.
Billions for ballistics, buttons for retrofitting? The priorities will become clear in the months ahead.
Colombia leads fossil fuel farewell
The first International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels will be held in April, not only creating an event almost impossible to acronym but also kick-starting a process that global climate talks have consistently avoided.
The aim of the conference is to build on a declaration signed by 24 countries, including Ireland, at Cop30, to “work collectively towards a just, orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels”.
Colombia and the Netherlands will co-host the two-day meeting in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta on April 28th and 29th.
It aims to explore the laws, economic arrangements and social policies that could be used to start seriously phasing out oil, coal and gas.
A Cop of three halves
Negotiations at Cop31 in November will be run by Australia but with Turkey in charge of the overall event which it will also host, while a pre-Cop gathering will take place in a Pacific Island country yet to be designated.
The compromise arrangement was cobbled together when neither Ankara nor Canberra would back down on their clashing bids to host the annual climate summit.
Much of the items for discussion at Cop30 were kicked down the road to this year so there will be a repeat emphasis on increasing climate finance, and a renewed focus on the Pacific Resilience Facility, a funding mechanism for small island nations under severe threat from climate change.
It will be interesting to see if the Colombia-Netherlands fossil fuel phase-out initiative gathers enough momentum to get on to the Cop31 agenda.
The success or otherwise of Brazil’s Tropical Forests Forever Facility, established during Cop30, will also become apparent in Turkey.
[ Ireland is falling for the American fossil fuel industry’s ‘energy security’ conOpens in new window ]
