Scorpion plagues, sharks on the move: has Cop26 done enough for nature?

The summit did not go far enough to avoid big changes' in the natural world, scientists warn, with animals already changing their behaviour

If the natural world was trying to have its say on the Glasgow climate pact, the arrival of a plague of scorpions in Egypt as Cop26 came to an end was not a subtle message. Around the time a tearful Alok Sharma lowered the gavel on the summit, rare thunderstorms were sweeping through Aswan province along the south of the Nile, forcing thousands of the creatures to seek shelter in people's homes. Scorpion stings left more than 500 people needing hospital treatment in the host nation for Cop27. Nobody died from the effects of the venom and, as is often the case, it is too early to say whether the climate crisis caused or intensified the flooding. But many experts warn we are at the beginning of a period of potentially biblical instability.

Cop26 was bad for nature because we are nowhere near limiting warming to 1.5 degrees," said Simon Lewis, a professor of global change science at University College London who was supporting Congo basin countries in Glasgow. Double the number of species will lose more than half of their climatically defined area at 2C than they would have at 1.5. So big changes are coming."