Figures from architecture and the built environment who attended COP26 have given the climate conference low marks while praising the energy of the fringe events and hoping that politicians' words will now be followed by action.
"It's just a start when it's almost too late," said Andrew Waugh of Waugh Thistleton Architects, who gave the conference a score of just one-and-a-half out of ten.
Waugh was one of the ten attendees interviewed by Dezeen ahead of the Glasgow conference, saying he hoped it would bring "an optimism of what a greener future could bring".
Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) president Simon Allford gave a much higher score, rating COP26 six-and-a-half out of ten. "It's been good ? but it's what happens next that really matters," he said. Hélène Chartier, head of zero-carbon development at international network C40 Cities, said it was "better than nothing but clearly insufficient," giving it a score of five out of ten.
After a fortnight of negotiations, the 197 countries participating in the summit agreed the Glasgow Climate Pact, a commitment for more urgent cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and bigger contributions to help poorer nations deal with the effects of global heating.
But the measures within the pact are not enough to limit temperature rises to the important benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius and the language around coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, was watered down following a late interven...