What is Cop27?
COP27 is the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC. COP27 took place at took place in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el- Sheikh, from 6th to 20th November 2022. COP27 concluded with a historic decision to establish and operationalize a loss and damage fund.
What was discussed at COP27?
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at the conclusion of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, stated that, this conference has been driven by two overriding themes: Justice and Ambition.
- Justice for those on the frontlines who did so little to cause the crisis – including the victims of the recent floods in Pakistan that inundated one-third of the country.
- Ambition to keep the 1.5 degree limit alive and pull humanity back from the climate cliff.
COP27 has taken an important step towards justice.
- The decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period.
Justice should also mean several other things:
- Finally making good on the long-delayed promise of $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries; Clarity and a credible roadmap to double adaptation finance.
- Changing the business models of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.
- They must accept more risk and systematically leverage private finance for developing countries at reasonable costs.
- We need to drastically reduce emissions now – an issue that was not discussed in COP27.
- A fund for loss and damage is essential – but it’s not an answer if the climate crisis washes a small island state off the map – or turns an entire African country to desert.
- The red line we must not cross is the line that takes our planet over the 1.5 degree temperature limit.
- To have any hope of keeping to 1.5, we need to massively invest in renewables and end our addiction to fossil fuels.
- We must avoid an energy scramble in which developing countries finish last – as they did in the race for COVID-19 vaccines. Doubling down on fossil fuels is double trouble.
- The Just Energy Transition Partnerships are important pathways to accelerate the phasing out of coal and scaling up renewables.
We need all hands on deck to drive justice and ambition.
- This also includes ambition to end the suicidal war on nature that is fuelling the climate crisis, driving species to extinction and destroying ecosystems
- on nature that is fuelling the climate crisis, driving species to extinction and destroying ecosystems.
Finally, justice and ambition require the essential voice of civil society. The most vital energy source in the world is people power. That is why it is so important to understand the human rights dimension of climate action.
- Climate advocates – led by the moral voice of young people — have kept the agenda moving through the darkest of days.
“We can and must win this battle for our lives.”