by On Sunday, the United Nations’ annual climate change conference came to a close in Sharm el-Shieth, Egypt, after two weeks of meetings and talks by more than 200 countries. Issues ranging from funding for climate justice to maintaining the goals set by the 2015 Paris Climate Accords were on the to-do list, and the conference was attended by more than 45,000 people.
Here are three of the main takeaways after the year’s meeting.
A climate justice fund is finally moving
After years of debate and resistance from wealthier countries, an agreement has been signed to create a fund to help developing countries pay for damages and losses due to floods, storms and droughts made worse by climate change. The decision, called the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, calls for a committee with representatives from 24 countries to determine what form the fund should take, countries should contribute and where the money should go over the next year.
Countries mainly from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the South Pacific and Latin America fought to add this fund to the formal agenda, and maintained a pressure campaign on the issue of climate justice. Developing countries do little to contribute to the climate crisis, while facing the worst effects of it.
“The announcement offers hope to vulnerable communities around the world struggling to survive climate stress, and lends some credibility to the COP process,” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s Minister for Climate Change. Pakistan is leading a group of 134 developing countries pressing for loss and damage payments after devastating floods hit the country in the summer. The devastating floods pushed a third of the country under water and were exacerbated by global warming. It was responsible for 1,500 deaths and caused an estimated $30 billion in damage, all while Pakistan contributes less than 1 percent of the world’s emissions.
Presence of fossil fuels is seen on the ground and in the COP 27 agreements
Some 636 representatives of fossil fuel companies were part of representative delegations and trade teams, much to the frustration of climate activists. A final agreement negotiated by the host Egyptian delegation did not explicitly include the gradual reduction of fossil fuels in the final text of this year’s agreement. Instead, the final agreement encourages “efforts toward phasing out coal power and phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”
The deal also calls for the phasing out of unlimited fossil fuel powers and some fossil fuel subsidies, but fossil fuel use was affirmed for the near future, and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said the United Arab Emirates would continue to deliver oil and gas “for as long as the world needs it.” The United Arab Emirates, which produces an average of 3.2 million barrels of oil per day, will host next year’s climate summit (COP28) in Dubai.
Many attendees felt that tepid language and incomplete reduction of fossil fuels were not enough.
“Over the past year, our climate leadership has been tested in many ways,” said Dan Jorgensen, Denmark’s acting minister for climate and energy. “We are not calling for a sudden interruption of energy supplies, but we must equally recognize that the energy crisis is driven by reliance on fossil fuels.”
[Related: Three nations pledge to reverse decades of destruction in the rainforest.]
Many countries remain committed to the 2.7 Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius) goal
Despite a 50/50 chance that the world will exceed 2.7 Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius) of warming over the next five years, many more developed countries have shown their commitment to strengthen the pledge to keep that set target alive. in 2015..
However, the final agreement did not include a reference to phasing out all fossil fuels, which many scientists believe is necessary to advance the decision made at COP26 in 2021 to reduce coal use.
“The current text is not enough. But we have shown with the loss and damage fund that we can do the impossible. So we know we can come back next year and get rid of fossil fuels once and for all,” said Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, the Marshall Islands Climate Envoy, who along with other island states fear near-total destruction if temperatures exceed this level. limit.
The commitment and belief in this temperature threshold seems to be a difference between the different main players. China has several concerns about the 1.5 target. Li Shuo, a Beijing-based Greenpeace policy adviser, said The New York Times that the target would put pressure on the Chinese government to implement a stricter target to reduce greenhouse gases in China, something the government wants to avoid. Meanwhile, representatives of the United States and the EU said that any final agreement must stress the importance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.
[Related: Why the 1.5-degree-Celsius climate goal still matters.]
Other key moments include the revival of US-China cooperation on climate change and Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, declaring that “Brazil is back” in the global climate fight. Lula defeated right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who refused to host the 2019 climate summit originally planned for Brazil and presided over the increasing destruction of the rainforest.
