DR Congo's climate activists call for more stun actions

Environment activists and ecologists in the Democratic Republic of Congo reacted on Sunday to the agreements reached at the COP26 climate summit, demanding more action from all countries to enact the declarations.

Within the negotiations, countries agreed to focus on the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris accord, keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

Experts and vulnerable countries have long advocated that threshold, but some nations previously clung onto the option of aiming for "well below 2C (3.6 F)."

The Glasgow Climate Pact also included enough financial incentives to almost satisfy poorer nations and solved a long-standing problem to pave the way for carbon trading.

Ecologist Gedeon Bakeretsi told the AP that Makala, a form of charcoal, was widely used for cooking in the DRC in the absence of reliable electricity.

He said the country needed significant financial aid to reduce its reliance on Makala and to up its usage of clean energy.

"This financial support for us, as actors in the environment, is an opportunity to once again send the message to decision-makers to take action, to work on and to apply the decisions taken in this conference, because we have no more time to waste," he said.

There was also an agreement by nations to explicitly target fossil fuel subsidies, though the original proposals were greatly watered down.

The agreement also said big carbon polluting nations would have to come back and submit stronger emission-cutting pledges by the end of 2022.

Environmental activist, Olivier Ndoole, said the commitments made by Congo as well as other wealthier nations at the summit such as France and the US sent a "strong signal".

Negotiators said the deal preserved, albeit barely, the overarching goal of limiting Earth's warming by the end of the century to 1.5 degrees.

The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times.

Bakeretsi said Congo was already feeling the effects of climate change.

"With us in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the effects and signs of climate change are real and visible here."