Last week I attended the COP26 conference – a fabulous experience that will stay with me for a long time. I tried to capture my thoughts and impressions during the event in a daily blog, and wanted to finalise the series with a few final thoughts on the outcome, now that it has finished.
We have probably all, by now, seen the final agreement that was made at the very end of the conference, and the various commentaries that have accompanied this to try to make sense of it, and determine whether this is an overall positive outcome, or whether it falls short of what we were hoping for.
My own opinion lies on the side of this having fallen well short of expectations. Of course, world leaders have a difficult balance to perform. They have considerations of other factors – generally economic, and their own short term popularity - as well as climate change, and it is only in a handful of the most vulnerable nations where climate change is right now the number one priority. For others, the impacts have not become so apparent yet that they consider immediate and wholescale change to be absolutely necessary. But of course, we know that everybody needs to change immediately for the world to have any hope of limiting warming to a 1.5degree temperature rise. So we see future ambitions being discussed at length, rather than immediate commitments, and the gap between what we say we want to achieve, and our mechanisms for scaling this technology up to become a reality are miles apart.
One of my observations during COP26 was that engineering and technology did not play a central role in the proceedings. I was surprised by this, and feel that this allows for an enormous loophole in the delivery of realistic solutions. We need to move away from words and towards real and practical actions to scale up the technologies that are required, and create the new adaptation solutions that are necessary.
The commitment of the climate activists outside the walls of the conference zone were much closer to the truth and urgency of the need for climate action, but in the middle is a requirement for genuine collaboration on making progress on the scientific and engineering front to address these needs. COP26 is a conference for world leaders, and this is crucial to enable the policy landscape and funding mechanisms and commitments that will enable the change, but it should not be done in the absence of those who can actually provide the solutions, and this really is in the hands of the technolgists, as well as the general public whose behaviour changes will be necessary.
And whilst there is an urgent need to change, we must not lose sight of the business and cost saving opportunities that this change will provide. Some focus on what these opportunities are, and how they can be developed and implemented would be a useful accompaniment to COP26, in order to give some hope and leadership in the right direction, as opposed to just slowing down our journey in the current direction. 
Thank you for reading these blogs, and I hope that they have been useful in giving an insight to what it was like to be part of the conference.

Warning – this is not wholly positive, and this particular write up represents some of the negative things I have seen at COP26, and by no means represents my overall impression, which has been hugely positive, but I do want to record these thoughts too.
I just wanted to take some time to talk about inclusion at COP26, as lots of people have been talking about this. From my own perspective, I obtained a ticket to the ‘Blue’ zone (where the negotiations have been taking place) through our international organisation the World Federation of Engineering Organisations, who were given some 6 tickets or so for the two-week period (as they are official observers at UNFCCC) which we could switch around between different people over the duration of the event. It has been a great privilege for me to be here as part of this group, but in reality only three of our delegation managed to come in the end, and all of them from the UK, due to the difficulties with either visa or accommodation or flights.
I am also involved with the Womenvai group - another official observer of UNFCCC – who have been a great source of support here. With this group I have seen first-hand how they have struggled to access information on the vaccination requirements – not only in terms of travelling to the UK, but in terms of taking a daily test which is necessary for entry. The Covid test kits have been completely unavailable at the conference, unlike in the Green (public) zone where they are being given out free of charge in boxes to anybody who would like one. Whilst the boxes are available to COP26 delegates at some of the biggest hotels in the city of Glasgow (Hilton etc), it seems ridiculous to me that they are not absolutely accessible to anybody at anytime. And the information that has been provided seems insufficient to me to help delegates from other countries to register these test results on the UK Government website on a daily basis. So from a personal perspective I have seen very clearly how even the most privileged with tickets have not been able to come, and have struggled with lack of basic information.
The Blue Zone is fortified like a prison, and surrounded by walls and barbed wire. The Green Zone also feels unwelcoming, and certainly not part of the ‘main event’ since it separated by the Clyde river and a 20 minute walk, and access is gained through a convoluted route through a car park. Don’t get me started on the food choices and food packaging in the Green Zone, but let’s just say it could have been a lot better.
In terms of information provided once we get into the Blue Zone conference centre, the wayfinding services are poor. A map of ‘The Site’ gives the absolute minimum of information – not even explaining which ‘site’ it is referring to (Blue or Green, that is). Zone D – the biggest of the zones, is a vast hall with multiple pavilions, and at least some distinguishing landmarks could have been usefully included – especially for visitors who do not speak English, and just a description of what is in the zone would be good (rather than just identifying letters).
In terms of IT, it is almost impossible to access the COP26 platform successfully, and find what you are looking for. I have been here over a week now and not managed to get my head around where things are to be found on this site, or how to find things a second time that I know are there.
But much more fundamental than the issues above, which are basically nice to haves once you have a ticket, is the lack of accessibility to those marginalised and indigenous communities who do not have a voice here. These groups have found it impossible to have a seat at the table, as the article here describes. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/08/cop26-legitimacy-questioned-as-groups-excluded-from-crucial-talks
I reiterate my own privilege in being involved as a delegate at this COP26 event, but do want to point out that this privilege is not extended as far as it should be, so that we can hear first hand from those people who are at the front line of the climate changes occurring.
BUT, on the other hand, COP26 has succeeded very well in drawing huge attention to the immediate dangers of climate change in the world, and given us all an extended opportunity to understand the issues involved, and learn how to address them in our personal and professional lives. Whilst we are not at the end of the week yet, and not sure how the final negotiations will turn out, the legacy it leaves will for me be one of hope and inspiration for change, and a sense of urgency.
Part of my work is at King’s College London where I am Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence, looking at ways to inspire students to use their skills to address sustainable development, through the curriculum and beyond. I go back to this work with renewed energy, because at the end of COP26 we have to find ways to include everybody in the conversation about climate change, and to create inclusive and accessible outcomes that leave no one behind.

Today was Gender Day @cop26, as well as Science and Innovation Day, and what a good combination of themes!
The plenary session in the morning was impressive, and hugely inspiring, with a session chaired by UK Government minister Anne Marie Trevelyan which included US Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. We heard from a range of international panellists, as well as video content from around the world, on the need for incorporating the gender perspective into all decisions, and the commitments needed to mainstream gender in the National Adaptation Plans for climate change.
Particularly inspiring were some of the indigenous speakers, for example the Bolivian representative (whose name, sadly, I did not catch since I was waiting in the queue for a COP26 shuttle bus in Glasgow at the time) who spoke about women being the keepers of seeds, and the creators of life, nurturing our offspring and our dependents, including the planet. The incorporation of these views, thoughts and philosophies is totally refreshing to hear in such an otherwise corporate environment. On a similar note, the session on dreams for the future was equally inspiring, with delegates being invited to dream of their best scenarios for a sustainable and happy future.
But after a great start to the day I finished the afternoon with a feeling of slight frustration that the aspirations, dreams and hopes for a gender inclusive future were not easily able to be turned into reality, as there was very little visibility outside of the sessions of any gender based organisation.
As part of World Federation of Engineering Organisations I have worked on behalf of our Women in Engineering Committee to sign WFEO up to one of the Action Coalitions that are being led by UN Women and the Generation Equality campaign. We have signed up to the Action Coalition on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality, since this was the one that seemed to fit our agenda of technology solutions to address gender inequality most closely. Today we heard more about the Action Coalition on Feminist Action for Climate Justice, and I was left wondering whether this would have been a better coalition to sign up to. But without the ability to find out more about it here at COP26, where UN Women are not represented, I feel it is difficult to turn thoughts into actions.
The commitment that we have made as part of the Action Coalition relates to the (global) gender disaggregation of Professional Engineering Institution (PEI) membership statistics, and this is something that I have been seeking support with from our UK Engineering PEIs, but so far without much success. I would really love to work with other allies to progress this initiative, so please do get in touch if you are able to support this work.
But for now, Happy #GenderDay, and thanks for reading.

On Monday 8th November, the day before the Gender Day at COP26 I am joining the Women’s Engineering Society and the Institute of Asset Management to discuss How to use the SDGs to Address the Climate Crisis.
At this event I am representing the World Federation of Engineering Organisations’ Women in Engineering Committee, where I am Deputy Chair, and I will be talking about our perspectives of the gender, climate change and engineering nexus at this discussion.
The gist of my presentation is based around the four areas where we need to consider climate change from the gender perspective, namely women’s increased vulnerability to climate change; women’s role as effective actors with respect to climate change; the need for technology to be inclusive of the needs of women and all other stakeholders; and the role of women as engineers in addressing the climate emergency.
Firstly, as engineers, we must be aware of the various areas in which our engineering and technical solutions are needed, and how different stakeholders often need different solutions. Women, and particularly in the global south, have a vulnerability to climate change that is different to men, and that is largely due to the different societal and cultural roles that they perform. For example, women will be more vulnerable to food security because their ability to grow food will be impacted by global warming and other climate weather events, making growing seasons shorter and harvests more vulnerable. Food will also, consequently, be more expensive, and food preparation will be impacted because of fuel and water shortages caused by changes to biodiversity supply as a result of climate change. Women will need different solutions to climate migration, where they are often more at risk physically than men, less able to move around independently, less able to claim compensation because they are not land owners, and often have children with them – making relocation more difficult. And women – as primary carers - are likely to be impacted by any health problems that affect their family members due to poor sanitation or water pollution caused by climate events, thus preventing them from undertaking paid work. All of these differences affect the ability of women to adapt to climate change, and so will need solutions that are relevant and appropriate to their situations.
Secondly, women – and other indigenous populations – have a vast amount of knowledge to bring to the table to address climate change events, to adapt, and to build resilience. They are responsible for many decisions in their daily lives – such as purchasing products, food choice and preparation, waste, and home heating behaviours that will impact climate change, and they need to be engaged as effective actors, and as gatekeepers and influencers of their family’s behaviours. Listening to their voices not only validates their input, but engages and empowers them in the debate, giving agency and permission to act.
Thirdly, any technology that is being developed to address climate change directly, or to help people to create solutions in the multitude of others areas that will lead to behaviour change, to more sustainable living, to more ethical investing, or to any number of the others ways that we will need to change, must to be created inclusively in order to ensure that it is accessible and appropriate for all. We have learned from past experience that unless we are deliberate in creating technology that takes all stakeholders into account, and that has equity and accessibility built in, then we will end up with biased and discriminatory technology that perpetuates inequality. See my website here for further examples related to inclusive engineering outcomes www.inceng.org.
And finally, we must increase the number of women who have access to careers as engineers and technologists. In the UK, 13% of the engineering profession are women, and only 6% of professionally registered engineers are women. There are many well documented barriers to the entry, progress and retention of women in engineering, but we must take more positive action to improve the situation and work together as a profession to find real and lasting solutions. The World Federation of Engineering Organisations is addressing these issues in a number of ways, and I will write more on this in a subsequent blog. But for now, I have outlined the gist of my position at the panel session of 8th November, and I will report on how it went after the event.

Blog day 4 – I am slightly losing track of days now, but this is Thursday so I think that means Day 4.
It was a pretty early start this morning as I wanted to get in for the Powerful Women panel session at the UK Presidency pavilion at 8am, and that proved to be worthwhile as it was a good discussion between the panellists, and you can see the write up of this here so no need for me to elaborate more, but just to say that it was good to hear that one of the recommendations that came out from the session was the need for collecting and monitoring diversity data. This is close to my heart because it is something I have been pushing the Professional Engineering Institutions to commit to doing for a while now, so that we can get a good global benchmark of gender disaggregated data from around the world. This recommendation is repeated constantly in reports, and is something that I have been asking for on behalf of WFEO for some time, but for some unknown reason it is consistently ignored. Maybe it's time to take this request to the next level, and indeed it is the subject of the 'Women Count' event on Tuesday at COP26 next week, so I am going to be looking for some allies there to progress this further.
This was followed by the WFEO (World Federation of Engineering Organisations – the organisation that I am representing here at COP26) – Younger Members/Future Leaders committee, who were basically launching their Climate Declaration, which can be seen here. A great panel, including Immediate Past President Rachel Skinner as moderator, and some of the fabulous younger members led by WFEO member Milda Pladaite. Congratulations to this group for a successful launch.
One of the really interesting things I attended today was the panel session on hydropower, which included panellists Malcolm Turnbull, former PM of Australia, who spoke about their Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, and a minister from Iceland who spoke of Iceland’s energy mix and their plans to stop using fossil fuel by 2030. It was facilitated by the CEO of the International Hydropower Association, and the group were discussing the San Jose Declaration on Sustainable Hydropower. It was interesting later to see the SSE plans, in the Green Zone, for a hydropower station at the Coire Glas development in the Great Glen, which would become the largest hydro project ever to be built in Scotland.
I also spent a couple of hours in a workshop run by Climate Fresk, who are basically storytellers / educationalists who use a series of information cards to get people to understand more about the how events related to climate change are inter-related, and how they connect with all areas of Sustainable Development. I think that this could be a really useful tool for us to use in education, and the workshop prompted great discussion amongst the group taking the workshop. From the facilitator I also learned about EAUC, a programme for sustainability leadership around carbon emissions measurement in education, which looks worth following up.
For the first time today I went over to see the exhibits in the Green (public) Zone of COP26, and have to say that it is not quite as impressive as I thought it would be, and not a patch on the Blue Zone, where there is so much going on, and so many informative panel sessions. The level of engagement was basic, and it’s a shame that some of the themes of the conference – such as Adaptation and resilience; Nature based solutions; Energy transitions; Clean transport; and Finance were not explored more.
Anyway, another good day, finished off with one the famous Glasgow Paesano pizzas.
You may be relieved to see that I am not going in tomorrow, so I will have a break from the blog. See you Saturday.

Blog Day 3 – which may be slightly harder to write after a night out in Finnieston – or then again that might make it easier…
Today I am getting a bit more used to COP26 and what it’s all about, and finding my way around much more easily. I got in early enough this morning to join the Women and Gender Constituency group who have a daily catch up at 9am every morning, where they hand out coloured masks to match the day’s theme, and today it was yellow. It felt good to be part of a bigger movement working towards gender equality.
One of the really interesting events I attended this morning was in the Benelux pavilion where they had invited government ministers to respond to an excellent report on the (lack of) gender integration in the Belgian policies and in particular their National Energy and Climate Plan. It was really interesting to hear the responses from the Government representatives who basically talked a good talk, but in terms of policies to address the clear need for the integration of the gender perspective, the level of ambition in their policies was somewhat inadequate. They were basically being challenged, through this public engagement, to do more. In the short term, they were invited to sign up to the Joint statement published by the Scottish Government and UN Women at COP26 calling for the role of women and girls to be advanced in addressing climate change. The longer goal of the Benelux team, however, was to get engagement from their ministers for next year’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66) where work towards achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes takes centre stage. I wish them luck, and look forward to seeing whether this strategy has been successful.
Another useful network group I came across today was the Global Alliance for Building and Construction – a group I had not come across before, but which were established at COP21 in Paris to represent the international building and construction industry. This group were really the closest organisation I have come across so far to the building and engineering sector, who seem to be somewhat unrepresented here in the blue zone at COP26. The other sector that seems to be missing here is the materials sector, who surely play a massive part in climate change mitigation, but who don’t seem to be represented here at all – or not that I have seen so far. Maybe I just haven’t come across them yet, but I will keep looking.
At lunchtime today I met up, for the first time in person, with my colleagues from Womenvai – a group of International women engineers who have been super supportive of one another here at COP26, sharing intel, helping with accommodation let-downs, and generally supporting one another with anything and everything. It is great to have such a support group to turn to.
And then this evening I had an excellent night out with 2 other female colleagues from Engineers Without Borders, so thank you Emma and Lottie for the invitation to join you.
Anyway, it’s a very early start tomorrow, so that’s it for now. 

Day 2 was definitely not the same walk-in-the-park experience of getting in to the conference venue that I had yesterday, as this time it took about 90 minutes to get through security, but at least I know now for tomorrow, and will get there earlier.
I went into the Blue Zone again today and spend the morning with the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) of the UNFCCC – a group who I have really only just come across – who have been remarkably well organised in their communication to those delegates who are aligned with the gender messages at COP26. Each day this group send out an email with the main messages of the day, and pull together all of the events that are taking place around COP relating to gender. There is also a colour scheme, and they are asking people to wear the appropriate colour in order to stand in solidarity with the gender messages (although to be honest this would have been more useful to know before the conference, so that I could have brought the right colours with me, as there are not many days that correspond to the clothes in my suitcase as it stands). It turns out that each country has also nominated a National Gender and Climate Change Focal Point, and the list of people holding this position is here. The UK representative is Robyn Mawdsley, and she was there at the workshop, where all of the national focal point representatives were working out what their role entails, how to get the support they need, and how to collaborate for best results. I will definitely follow up with her when the conference finishes.
I spent the afternoon continuing to look around the main pavilions where each of the countries are represented, and caught some of the really interesting panel discussions that were taking place. In the Health Pavilion I heard the discussion on ‘Energy, air pollution and health: Delivering energy systems that protect climate and health’, where the main message was ‘stop burning coal’.
In the Nature+ Zone I heard ‘How cities are inspiring nations to embrace forest action’, followed by ‘Accelerating Africa’s Locally led land restoration movement’, where I learned that 65% of Africa’s land is degraded, and that AFR100 is a programme to restore 100 million hectares of land by 2030. We also collectively liked the proposal that suggested countries should have their GDP values measured by the amount that they protect the climate, and they should have their wealth discounted by the amount that they damage the climate.
Following this I reverted back to the UK Presidency pavilion, where coffee is available and plugs are too, and I listened there for the second time in two days to Lord Deben talking about his role chairing the Climate Change Committee – and I have to say that the more I hear him talk, the more I like his forthrightness, and in particular his criticism of the Government’s cuts to ODA spend. He was joined today in this panel discussion entitled ‘Distributed Leadership - Working Together to Reach Net Zero’ by (amongst others) Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, and a fabulous young activists whose first name is Holly but I can’t tell you any more than that as the panellists don’t seem to be listed anywhere.
So that was about it for my second day.
Tomorrow the Women and Gender Constituency tell us to wear something yellow, but I don’t think I have anything yellow. I have to say that I am feeling the draw towards the gender activists, and this is being helped by the fabulous and supportive Whatsapp group I am a member of, which consists of all of the women that I know globally who are here as part of Womenvai.