Representatives from around 200 countries will be meeting from Sunday in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, to debate climate change and the fight against global warming, when warnings of catastrophe multiply.
In what will be the 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), which will run until October 18, more than 35 thousand participants are expected, with 2,000 interventions scheduled on more than 300 topics.
Despite the numbers, despite the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, saying that COP27 is the opportunity to “show unity against an existential threat”, great progress is not expected in the fight against global warming, taking into account that the great world leaders will not attend, unlike what happened at other meetings, such as COP26, in 2021 in Glasgow, UK.
COP27, which marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, in its original acronym), basically maintains the same objectives as other summits since 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed, to limit global warming at 2ºC (degrees celsius), and if possible at 1.5ºC, above the average values of the pre-industrial era.
On the official page of COP27, it is said that keeping the 1.5ºC objective alive requires “bold and immediate actions of ambition from all parties”, with the summit being “a moment for countries to fulfill their promises and commitments” to achieve the goals. goals of the Paris Agreement.
At the summit, the organization says, countries must review their contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and must create a work plan to mitigate the effects of climate change. Adaptation, he adds, is fundamental, as is helping the most vulnerable communities in this adaptation.
And from Sharm el-Sheik it is considered essential that “significant progress on the crucial issue of climate finance” still comes out. Rich countries have pledged to support poorer countries in the fight against and adaptation to climate change with 100 billion dollars a year, but this has not yet happened.
In addition to the “big issues”, such as the contributions of each country or region to limit global warming or financing, the Egyptian presidency of COP27 has scheduled themed days and side events, dedicated to topics such as finance, science, youth, decarbonization, loss of biodiversity, water, agriculture or energy.
Topics such as the role of cities in the fight against global warming, the impact of climate on health, water and sanitation systems, food and garbage will also be discussed. A so-called “green zone”, where companies, civil society and academia will come together, will also host more than 100 initiatives.
Although the organization considers COP27 a “golden opportunity” for the world to effectively face the global challenge of climate change, despite calls for world leaders to make the summit a “key” moment, these same leaders have not expressed an intention to attend. , many of them grappling with an energy, food and inflationary crisis resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
COP27 takes place as the climate crisis is increasingly felt, exemplified by an unprecedented drought in Europe, with the hottest summer in 500 years, or with historic floods in Pakistan, where a third of the country was flooded, and more recently in Africa.
About a week ago a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN agency, warned that the levels of the main greenhouse gases continued to rise in 2021 and the data indicate that 2022 will follow the same path.
And another UN report, from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), warned that current international policies are directing the Earth towards a warming of 2.8ºC by the end of the century, well above the 2ºC with which countries in the world made a commitment in 2015 that they did not fulfill.
The report indicates that if the commitments made at the COP26 in Glasgow are fulfilled, temperatures will rise between 2.4ºC and 2.6ºC. It is legitimate to doubt that even more ambitious goals will emerge at COP27 if those previously assumed have not been met.
About a month ago, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, asked the world to act at COP27 to prevent climate disasters and save the human species.
“It is a matter of life and death for us, for our security today and for our survival tomorrow,” António Guterres said at UN Headquarters, at the start of a preparatory conference for COP27.
