COP27: Urgent Need for Solidarity on Issues, Tensions and Climate

What is COP27?

The past seven years have been the hottest years on record. For a short time, global lockdowns reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but they have since risen to pre-pandemic levels. For his 2022 Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), the stakes are no higher. A few weeks from now, in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh on Egypt’s east coast, representatives from some 200 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, will meet business leaders, religious figures, climate experts and local authorities. join the advocates of action against climate change. His 12 days of events and official negotiations. The goal is to strengthen and accelerate the international response to the climate crisis that continues to wreak havoc around the world.

This moment in COP history

Early COP meetings (the first of which was held in 1995) focused primarily on mitigation: the need for countries to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis that scientists warned was coming. Make promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But everyone attending the COP these days recognizes that curbing carbon pollution is only part of the solution. Climate change is already underway and is accelerating, so we also need to develop new strategies to adapt to intensifying droughts, wildfires, tropical storms and floods.

And in pursuing these strategies, equity must come first. The United States, China, Russia, and the member states of the European Union collectively emit 63% of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, and the 10 most vulnerable to climate change are collectively responsible for about 1%. increase. As NRDC President Manish Bapna recently said, wealthy, high-emissions countries are facing challenges when poor, low-emissions countries “cannot pay for the climate crisis they did not cause.” We cannot expect or allow them to continue to pay the price.

These are the major issues facing COP27 participants, focused on four broad themes: mitigation, adaptation, finance and cooperation.

relief

Seven months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a major report that reiterated the urgency of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Today, disasters are more frequent and more severe than the world has already experienced. Its authors write that a temperature rise of just 1.5 degrees Celsius is likely to “inevitably increase multiple climate hazards, posing multiple risks to ecosystems and humans.” Such risks include the extinction of plant and animal species that cannot adapt to climate change, and large-scale population displacements that render land uninhabitable and livelihoods unstable.

we are going in the wrong direction.At this point, even if every country on Earth achieves their publicly declared climate targets, we yet Global temperature increase is 2.4 to 2.7 degrees Celsius. In other words, our individual climate goals do not currently translate into collective success. We expect discussions on mitigation at COP27 to focus on strengthening plans to fill this conspicuous gap. (Also, a last-minute edit of the Glasgow Climate Accord, the main document produced at last year’s COP26, resulted in a declaration that countries should strive for “phase-down” rather than “phase-out,” a new report said. It was responsible for the release of about 14 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020. That’s more than all petrol passenger cars in the world combined in one year. more than five times the

adaptation

Adaptation is a volatile topic last year, as representatives of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries spoke, often harshly and dispassionately, of the devastating effects climate change is having on communities and landscapes. It turns out there is. “Our islands are slowly being eroded by the sea,” said Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. “If this trend is not reversed, the Maldives will cease to exist by the end of this century.”

The anger and frustration expressed by some countries, many of them from the global South, over the disproportionate climate impact they are forced to bear It was made worse by the feeling that their voices were being minimized or even silenced during big discussions. Implement adaptive strategies. Those same tensions could erupt again this year unless wealthy nations can show they are willing to do more than voice their opinions on the seriousness of the problem. Teresa Anderson of the anti-poverty advocacy group ActionAid International said in the conclusion of COP26: We need results that show communities hit hardest by the climate crisis.The whole world together.

finance

So far, the biggest criticism at the COP has been its funding failures. Specifically, his $100 billion per year by 2020, his 2009 pledge for developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change. This money, which was to be mobilized by the wealthiest countries in the world, had symbolic as well as material value. It was long considered that wealthy high-emitting countries had a moral responsibility to reduce the climate burden of less wealthy people. , provide critical public investment to adapt to the growing challenges of the climate crisis.

But this financial promise, made in 2009 and repeated in the 2015 Paris Agreement, has not been met. Wealthy countries have consistently failed to deliver on this funding promise. In 2020, only $83 billion of her promised $100 billion was mobilized. Part of the problem was that the countries did not agree on how to split the bill. Various studies have proposed different ways of dividing the total, such as proportional to each country’s wealth, greenhouse gas emissions, or population. A common finding in these analyzes is that the US has the largest shortfall between what it should and has contributed, amounting to tens of billions of dollars annually.

However, as pointed out at COP26, if these countries contributed the full $100 billion each year, yet It is not enough to meet the challenges facing climate-vulnerable countries. The United Nations Environment Program estimates that adaptation costs alone in developing countries could reach $300 billion annually by 2030. Governments are negotiating a new climate finance target of over $100 billion for the period beyond 2025. Expect a more tense debate this year about the need to dramatically increase funding for climate change.

Also, the need for wealthy developed countries to recognize and pay for the climate change losses and damages already being incurred in the least industrialized and developing countries will not be discussed enthusiastically and in detail. It is certain. Over the years, the topic has been woven into the wider debate on climate financing, but this year there is strong momentum to add loss and damage to the formal COP agenda. Over 400 different organizations want just that. It’s hard to see how the organizers could ignore the weight of their collective and widely publicized efforts.

collaboration

Each year, COP participants and non-participants alike say: this This year’s COP is the most important one yet, one where we absolutely have to come together for a common cause…and every year, as it happens, they are right. But between the Global North and the Global South, tensions between countries moving away from fossil fuels and those that are unprepared or unwilling to do so are at the heart of virtually every COP meeting. has become an element. This will also be a factor. (The war in Ukraine and the associated turmoil in international energy markets have not exactly fostered global unity, either.)

In an effort to sow the seeds of cooperation ahead of the actual summit, the Democratic Republic of the Congo hosted a pre-summit in early October with delegates from over 50 countries participating virtually or in person. Citing recent climate-related disasters in Pakistan, Europe, Cuba, the Philippines and the United States, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stressed the global dimension of climate change, calling for “quantum-level compromises” between nations. I asked for But a statement by Congo’s Deputy Prime Minister Yves Bazaiba on the eve of the event hinted at a tone to expect in November. Noting that her 20 richest countries in the world account for her 80% of global emissions, she candidly predicted:

How collaboration is defined, and in particular who defines it, is clearly on the mind of everyone attending COP27. If significant progress is made on mitigation, adaptation or financing, attendees should address these tensions openly and transparently. It is no longer enough for high-emitting countries to lead the international debate. With any luck, these countries have learned their lessons over the past few years and understand that real climate change progress won’t happen until everyone is at the negotiating table.

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