Finally; CoP 27 has gotten underway in Sharma el-Sheik, Egypt with an appeal for concrete action and not mere rhetoric on the climate agenda.
Out-going President, Alok Sharma underlined this need when he handed over the mantle to Sameh Shoukry to lead Cop 27 building from successfully-delivered commitments of Cop 26 in Glasgow, a year ago.
He said: “with your help, we closed the Paris Rulebook, we made unprecedented progress on coal and on fossil fuel subsidies, we committed to rapidly scale up finance and to double adaptation finance by 2025.
“We reiterated the urgency of action for loss and damage and established serious work on funding arrangements, we hope that this will pave way for a formal agenda item and tangible progress here in Egypt”.
Turning to the Russia/Ukraine war he noted the conflict has precipitated multiple global crisis but urged nations not to let it get in the way of implementing climate goals.
However, he noted there was no significant strides in keeping global temperatures below 1.5 degrees celsius to reduce risks and impacts of climate change as only twenty nine out of one hundred and ninety seven country-parties of the UN framework Convention on Climate Change have updated their nationally determined contributions.
On his part, Sameh Shoukry President for Cop 27 and Egyptian Foreign Minister said he was hopeful that the ongoing conference will be a turning point to renewing and implementing commitments intended to fight climate change.
We are still facing growing gaps in climate finance, adaptation and keeping up with agreements made in Paris, we have witnessed devastating effects of climate change in Pakistani, Africa, Europe and America so these events should be a lesson to be leant and a wakeup call to act quickly and take necessary steps” Shoukry explained.
Besides, Simon Stiell, executive secretary for UNFCCC pointed out the need to enhance the delivery of the principles of transparency and accountability throughput the process of implementing climate agendas.
He also stressed the need to put women and girls at the center of the climate crisis.
Women and girls have to be placed at the Centre of climate decision making and action, their empowerment leads to better governance and better outcomes. Stiell said.
Meanwhile, Dr Hoesung Lee, chairperson for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that the prerequisite to a successful adaption is ambitious mitigation to keep global warming within limits.
“Accelerating international financial cooperation is a critical enabler of low emissions and just transition and adaptation. Adaptation gaps especially in developing countries are driven by widening disparities between the cost and the available finance.
More than 120 world leaders are due to arrive at the summit and are expected to speak on Monday and Tuesday.
A recent report by the United Nations Environment Program released ahead of COP 27 calls for drastic increase in funding implementation of actions designed to help vulnerable communities adapt to the climate storm.
According to the audit adaptation needs in the developing world are set to skyrocket to as much as 340 billion US dollars a year by 2030, yet today the support stands at less than one tenth of that amount.
At the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last year , all countries agreed to revisit and strengthen their climate plans, most of the parties that submitted new or updated their NDCs have strengthened their commitment to reducing or limiting greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 showing increased ambition in addressing climate change.
