This month's Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow made disappointing progress on the built environment and excluded the voices of ordinary citizens, writes attendee Hélène Chartier, head of zero-carbon development at international network C40 Cities.

It has been quite an exhausting two weeks and in the end, like many, I have quite mixed feelings. I think that despite new momentum (and not only for the nations: cities, businesses, and citizen groups are definitely more mobilised than ever), COP26 only delivered incremental progress when we clearly need big breakthroughs.
Amidst a difficult geopolitical context and the Covid-19 crisis, countries reached an agreement on the outstanding issues of the Paris Rulebook, which sets out how signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement should achieve their decarbonisation commitments. They also outlined a process for accelerating ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance that keep the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels within sight.
However, they fell short of achieving new immediate action in many areas related to climate finance and the phasing out of fossil fuel and coal as well as "loss and damage," which describes compensation paid by richer countries to poorer countries to compensate them for the impact of climate change.
I also personally think that this COP proved that we cannot rely on COPs and nations to save the world. Okay, we already knew that: the five ...