What will the next United Nations climate conference tell us about the coming COP27 crisis and the role of global warming in reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
The chairperson of an influential negotiating bloc in the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Egypt has called for compensation for poorer countries suffering from climate change to be high on the agenda.
• A key issue at COP27 is ‘loss and damage’ finance — how to pay for the mounting impact of climate change on the countries that did the least to cause it and can least afford the destruction it brings.
Sarr said the group would like to see “an agreement to establish a dedicated financial facility” that pays nations that are already facing the effects of climate change at the summit.
Researchers say that nations are off track. Climate finance from the wealthy countries has failed to meet a promised goal. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICS) were expecting multilateral organizations such as the World Bank to increase funding to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and make communities and ecosystems less vulnerable to climate change, but this has not yet materialized into concrete agreements, Shoukry wrote.
Over a decade ago we promised a $100 billion per year in climate aid for poorer countries, but we’ve been waiting for too long.
We can’t afford to have a COP that isn’t serious. The crisis has pushed our adaptation limits, resulted in inevitable loss and damage, and delayed much-needed development.
The U.N. conference is a location where nations come together to hold countries accountable for historical responsibility, as evidenced by the success of the 2015 conference in Paris that set a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F).
At the end of the UN climate conference last year, developed nations were told to double their adaptation funding by the year 2025. However, the UN says even that amount of money would be insufficient to address the needs that exist in developing nations to prepare for climate risk.
The impacts from global warming have hit the world’s poorest countries especially hard so far, even though they’re responsible for a relatively small share of the greenhouse gasses that are causing temperatures to rise. The UN’s report says the deaths of 1500 people in Pakistan this summer are evidence of the rising risks of climate change.
“The message of this report is clear: strong political will is needed to increase adaptation investments and outcomes,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, wrote in a foreword to the report.
She said that to avoid spending the coming decades in emergency response mode, we need to get ahead of the game.
Climate Investment Funds and the UN Report on Climate Change: Making the Most of a Domestic Investment to Support Climate Change in the 21st Century
The annual climate conference is happening in Egypt but the UN published its report days before that. In a separate report published last week, the UN said the world isn’t cutting greenhouse gas emissions nearly enough to avoid potentially catastrophic sea level rise and other global dangers.
“The discourse needs to be raised significantly, the level of ambition, so that you can actually continue to do what you’re doing on mitigation even more, but you at the same time meet the adaptation needs,” says Mafalda Duarte, CEO of Climate Investment Funds, which works with development banks like the World Bank to provide funding to developing countries on favorable terms.
Extreme weather around the world is being supercharged by the climate crisis. Look no farther than the deadly floods in Pakistan this summer or Hurricane Ian in Florida this September. Disasters are getting more expensive because they’re becoming more intense as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and swamp the atmosphere with heat-trapping gasses.
Duarte says that failing to spend the money that’s necessary to limit and prepare for climate change exposes the entire world to potential risks. Those risks could include armed conflicts, refugee crises and disruptions in financial markets, analysts say.
“We have to change our mindset and the way we think, because, actually, when it comes to climate, you know, an investment across borders in other places is a domestic investment,” Duarte says.
CNN contributor, climate journalist, and independent filmmaker John D. Sutter has won the Livingston Award, the IRE Award, and other awards. He is the Ted Turner Professor of Environmental Media at The George Washington University. This commentary is not a commentary from him. View more opinion at CNN.
Vanuatu argues that climate change is too late for the U.S. and for future generations: a no-fear policy
The ambassador from the island of Vanuatu wants to create an insurance pool to compensate countries which are vulnerable to sea level rise.
At the time, Vanuatu – on behalf of an alliance of small-island states – argued quite reasonably that polluters should pay for the costs of their pollution.
“There have been many promises,” says Mahmoud Mohieldin, the UN’s climate change high-level champion for Egypt, but “without finance, money and investment, nothing will progress”.
After decades of deflection, it’s overdue for high-polluting countries like the United States to take this question seriously. It’s clear that polluters should be held accountable for these losses to territory, culture, life and property.
Yes, it is also absolutely critical that the world abandons fossil fuels as quickly as possible. That is another central discussion point at COP27, and the world is well behind on its goal of holding warming to 1.5 or at most 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages. We are on track for about 2.5 degrees of warming, but the recent climate bills that the US Congress has passed are a step in the right direction.
The less carbon we put into the atmosphere, the less risk we put into the climate system — with important consequences for sea levels, storms, drought, biodiversity and so-on.
The Peruvian farmer’s lawsuit against the RWE fossil fuel company over a melting glacier: A case study in Antigua and Barbuda
Arguments against action have taken many forms over the decades. The most laughable, in retrospect, is that this was a problem for the future rather than the present.
That may feel like a new phenomenon, but it’s been decades in the making. Scientists linked a deadly 2003 heat wave in Europe, for example, to human-caused warming. That heat wave killed an estimated 20,000 people.
The onslaught of ever-worsening heat waves, droughts, wildfires and storms can feel both urgent and numbing. The truth is that as long as humans have been burning fossil fuels, we’ve been making the planet more dangerous.
According to a recent analysis, the oil and gas industry has made nearly 3 billion dollars per day over the last 50 years. There was more than $31.3 trillion in profit for fossil fuel companies between the year 2000 and 2019) according to a recent report.
Short of international efforts to fund a loss-and-damage process, countries and individuals are turning to the courts. A Peruvian farmer, for example, is suing a German fossil fuel company over a melting glacier that threatens his home and farm. The suit, filed in 2015, according to news reports, claims the German company, RWE, should be liable for its proportion of the damages, in line with the proportion of global fossil fuel pollution it has created. RWE is fighting the lawsuit and doesn’t want to be responsible for the damage.
And in 2021, Tuvalu and other countries formed the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law. The aim is to explore claims in international courts.
The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda said last year that litigation is the only way to be taken seriously, according to The New York Times. “We want to force them to respond in a court of law.”
Climate Change Conference Overview: What Next Year’s COP27 and What Future Future Directions Are Looking for? Tune in on the Future of Climate Change Action in Egypt
This is a raging debate, even within the conference. At an event in London this week, climate activist, and media sensation, Greta Thunberg, said that the Congress of the Parties are not working and that she won’t be attending this year. “The COPs are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” Thunberg said.
The pressure is still on the countries at COP 27 to take more action to prevent pollution from heating the planet. Environmental groups are hoping to see more updated national commitments come out of COP27, especially since countries agreed last year to “revisit and strengthen” their targets for 2030.
The money is supposed to go toward new and improved infrastructure that might help keep people safe in a warming world. That might look like cities designed to be better at beating the heat or communities that are less likely to be wiped out in a wildfire. Or it could mean expanded early warning systems that can warn people about a flood or storm headed their way. There’s a push this year to secure even more funding for these kinds of adaptation projects, particularly since adaptation costs in developing countries have been projected to reach upwards of $300 billion a year by the end of the decade. Advocates are also pushing for more locally led solutions since what it means to live with climate change looks different from place to place and the people most affected by climate disasters haven’t always been included at planning tables.
The conference is taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The UN Climate Conference has one elephant in the room this year, because Egypt has cracked down on climate protests. Dozens of people have reportedly been arrested in the days leading up to the climate conference in an effort to quell demonstrations, adding to tens of thousands more political prisoners believed to be detained currently in Egypt.
Bear in mind that these annual climate negotiations are really only supposed to be a starting point for action. Leaders might make promises at these conferences, but then they’ve got to go home and pass legislation or complete some kind of project that’s supposed to have an impact on people’s lives. The exciting part is the idea of keeping countries accountable for following through on their commitments at these conferences. The same thing will happen at next year’sCOP if that doesn’t happen.
There have been some bright spots. Australia, under the new government’s leadership, doubled its planned cut to 43 percent below 2005 levels. Chile and a few other countries are working to change their constitution to grant the rights of nature. Most of the updates are from smaller polluters like Australia that are playing catch-up after submitting goals that were seriously lacking in detail. A lot of the fruit has already been picked.
Other wins have simply put emitters on the path to making good on last year’s promises. Fransen points to the United States, where the recent Inflation Reduction Act represented a massive step toward meeting its pledge of a 50 percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels. The US isn’t on track to reach that commitment She says that the nation’s political deadlock would make it hard for it to hit its goals this year.
Fransen is one of the people who keep a record of all the emissions plans and whether or not countries are sticking to them. It is difficult to take stock. For one thing, it means actually measuring how much carbon nations emit. The effects of emissions will be shown to the climate in 10, 20, or 100 years.
Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to determine how much CO2 humanity is producing—or to prove that nations are holding to their pledges. The origin of the signals is muddied by the gas in the atmosphere. Natural processes also release carbon, like decaying vegetation and thawing permafrost, further complicating matters. It’s like trying to find a leak in a swimming pool. Researchers have tried pointing satellites at the Earth to track CO2 emissions, but “if you see CO2 from space, it is not always guaranteed that it came from the nearest human emissions,” says Gavin McCormick, cofounder of Climate Trace, which tracks greenhouse gas emissions. We need more sophisticated methods because of that. For instance, Climate Trace can train algorithms to use steam billowing from power plants as a visible proxy for the emissions they’re belching. Other scientists have been making some progress using weather stations to monitor local emissions.
The troubling truth behind net-zero emissions proposals: How to bring out more than one billion lives in Africa, and what can we learn from COP27?
More than one million lives might have been saved if COVID-19 vaccines had been shared more equitably with lower-income countries in 2021, according to mathematical models incorporating data from 152 countries. The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 variant might be slowed by vaccine distribution and a drop in infections.
African progress towards eradication of malaria is being threatened by mosquitoes that are insecticide-resistant from Asia. In a study in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia — the site of a malaria outbreak — Anopheles stephensi accounted for almost all adult mosquitos found near the homes of participants with the disease. The notorious species can breed in urban environments and persist through dry seasons. If it isn’t protected by vaccines and other measures, more than 100 million people in Africa may get the disease. There is no silver panacea for this fast-spreading bug, says Fitsum Tadesse.
The US military puts out more CO2 than any nation in the world. The militaries are not included in emissions reporting. Eight researchers outline how to hold militaries to account in the global carbon reckoning.
“Imagine making a data-driven plan for the world, but leaving out more than one billion people in Africa,” writes energy researcher Rose M. Mutiso. “That’s the troubling truth behind net-zero emissions proposals.” She argues that we can’t we can’t engage meaningfully with the concept of net zero — at COP27 and in general — without Africa-specific data, appropriate models and African expertise.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03572-0
What do rich countries need to learn from climate change decisions? A phenomenological assessment of Egypt’s COP 2015 summit in the Middle East and North Africa
After a stint at Google, astronomer Oliver Müller is back in academia — and he has learnt some valuable lessons. One of the most important: don’t be a hero. “If a task can be finished only through putting your mental health and even physical health at risk, you are effectively hiding flaws in the system.”
The leaders of the wealthy nations are warned that there will be no backsliding on their commitments at the Glasgow climate conference in the UK last year.
Mahmoud Sakr, president of the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in Cairo, says that scientists from climate-vulnerable countries will be urging COP delegates to boost research funding. Countries, he says, need to conduct more of their own climate studies — especially in the Middle East and North Africa, which already experience low rainfall and arid conditions. The Arab world accounts for less than 1 percent of published climate studies.
In 2015, Egypt estimated that it needs to set aside $73 billion for projects to help the country mitigate climate change and adapt its infrastructure. But this number has now more than tripled to $246 billion, says environment minister Yasmine Fouad. The national budget added more burden and competed with our basic needs that have to be fulfilled when we implemented the most climate actions.
Ian Mitchell warned of potential consequences if loss and damage were to become a deal-breaker at the meeting. High-income countries could agree to the principle and then absorb loss-and-damage finance as part of their humanitarian-aid spending — meaning it would not be new money.
Adil Najam, who studies international climate diplomacy at Boston University in Massachusetts, thinks it is unlikely that these issues will be resolved in Egypt, and says that the politics will probably get messy. Loss- and damage finance can no longer be avoided by high-income countries, since it is becoming more clear that climate impacts in vulnerable countries are getting worse.
The organizing of this year’s COP in Africa has changed, according to Fouad. The importance of food security, desertification, natural disasters and water scarcity are issues that are relevant to most developing countries. The COP is a chance for more organizations to be heard.