Opening of COP27 in Egypt, "loss and damage" put on the agenda of the negotiations
Egyptian Sameh Shoukry officially took the reins of the Conference of the Parties (COP) for one year, during the opening ceremony of the 27th climate negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, November 6, 2022. AP - Peter Dejong
Text by: Géraud Bosman-Delzons Follow |
Jeanne Richard Follow
8 mins
The 27th Climate Conference officially opened on Sunday 18, while the summit of heads of state will be held on Monday and Tuesday.
The agenda was essentially technical since it involved defining the points that will be addressed in the negotiations.
Eagerly awaited by vulnerable countries, the issue of compensation for damage caused by climatic disasters will be on the official agenda for the first time.
Advertising
Read more
From our special correspondents in Sharm el-Sheikh
Was it a handover or a real hot potato between the two COP presidencies, from the Briton Alok Sharma to the Egyptian Sameh Shoukry, this Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh?
With the pressure exerted everywhere by global warming, and particularly painful in the poor and emerging countries – from Nigeria to Pakistan, from Somalia to the Philippines – the question arises with increasing acuity, while the effectiveness of COP is loudly interrogated.
One year after the Glasgow Climate Conference, some 40,000 participants – delegations, media, NGOs, companies, observers… – are expected in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, between a Red Sea with its suffering corals and the gates of the desert. .
Alok Sharma passes the torch
The world had left Alok Sharma tearful and asking for forgiveness at the end of a grueling COP26 for very meager results in view of the stakes.
We found him cheered up at the podium this Sunday noon, addressing a satisfaction to his teams: "
Thanks to our work, we have achieved our objective: we have kept the 1.5°C alive
", objective and iron law of the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global warming below 2°C and ideally to 1.5°C.
“
The UK presidency has shown that progress is possible, is happening and continues
,” he said, while acknowledging “
the scale of the challenge that remains before us
”.
Alok Sharma highlighted that "
thanks to the commitments made before and during COP26, emissions in 2030 should fall by 6 gigatonnes, or the equivalent of 12% of global annual emissions
”.
However, these are only non-binding country commitments.
In addition, while the Glasgow Pact has made it possible to make some "
advances
", in particular on promises of carbon neutrality, emissions continue to progress, and remain very, very far from the 45% reduction recommended by science. by 2030 precisely to contain global warming.
And only 29 countries out of 196 submitted new ambitions (nationally determined contributions) on the eve of COP27.
The ideal goal of the Paris Agreement seems increasingly chimerical and Antonio Guterres himself no longer has enough harsh words for states whose commitments are “
pitifully not up to par
”.
"
Our world can no longer afford greenwashing, pretense, laggards
,” he said in a video message posted to Twitter on October 27.
“
With current climate policies, the world is heading for 2.8 degrees of warming by the end of the century.
In other words, we are heading towards a global catastrophe.
»
As the latest @UNEP Emissions Gap report makes clear, we are headed for economy-destroying levels of global heating.
We need #ClimateAction on all fronts – and we need it now.
We must close the emissions gap before catastrophe closes in on us all.
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) October 27, 2022
Antonio Guterres on the occasion of the
report of the World Meteorological Organization
, published today, which draws up an inventory of the state of the climate of the planet:
The WMO makes it clear that change is coming with catastrophic rapidity, destroying lives and resources on every continent;
the last eight years have been the hottest on record and have generated ever more intense and dangerous heat waves, especially for the most vulnerable populations;
sea levels are rising twice as fast as in the 1990s and this is a threat to island states and the billions of people living in coastal regions;
the glaciers are melting faster and faster, and this is compromising access to water on all continents […] We must respond to the planet's messages of distress with action.
We must act ambitiously and credibly.
COP 27 is the time and the place to make it happen.
An unfavorable global context
The "
challenge
" pointed out by Alok Sharma is made much more complex in the light of the geopolitical context, at the end of the pandemic, and the triple inflationary, food and energy crisis.
His successor as COP President, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who has just been formally elected President of COP27 for a one-year term, therefore called on countries to "
get over the current political tensions
" .
and to work together for the climate.
But beyond the geopolitical context, it will also be necessary to overcome the tensions within the Conference itself.
For several years now, the representatives of the countries of the North, industrialized and historically responsible for global warming, have been promising financial aid to the countries of the South, which are more vulnerable.
Finance will indeed be at the center of the concerns
of this African COP, the most affected continent and the least emitter too, with only nearly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“
We have reached a point where finance makes or breaks the work program that we have before us
,” said Alok Sharma.
"
I hear the criticisms and agree that more needs to be done by governments and multilateral development banks, including doubling adaptation finance by 2025 and setting a post-2025 goal.
»
For the moment, most of the planned funding goes to mitigation (reduction of emissions) and only stagnates at 83 billion dollars out of the 100 planned since… 2009 and which were to be collected in 2020. President Shoukry has insisted on this point in his inaugural speech: "
The promise of 100 billion has not been materialized
" and "
a lot of the funding
" already allocated "
depends on loans
", in other words subject to reimbursement unlike donations, another grievance of the southern blocks.
He regrets that this situation leads to a climate between North and South, "
polarized positions" which "slow down the negotiations
".
And to plead: "
We must work with honesty
" to "
consensual solutions
" by calling for "
the acceleration of the implementation of policies and agreements
", or "
implementation
" in English, one of the most used terms in the inaugural speeches and the primary objective of the Egyptian presidency.
"One foot in the door"
And if there is one subject that tends to divide the two hemispheres, it is that, "
crucial
" according to the term used by Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention, of "loss and damage", or the damage caused by the effects of climate change and from which the economies of the least developed countries cannot recover.
However, this has indeed been included on the official agenda of the negotiations.
A historic first, and a point gained for the countries of the South, which can neither adapt nor pay for the damage caused by the increasingly violent and frequent phenomena.
"
We have one foot in the door and now we have to open it wide,
reacts Fanny Petitbon, specialist in the question at the NGO Care, which has been handling this file for more than fifteen years.
It is crucial to obtain from this COP a decision from the States on the creation of a financing mechanism dedicated to "losses and damage".
It's a matter of climate justice.
»
This inscription on the COP27 agenda "
revives the fight for justice for communities who lose their homes, their agricultural crops and their money
", welcomed Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy for the International Climate Action Network, "
a new fight for the financing of the "losses and damages" begins
".
@harjeet11: ”Inclusion of #LossAndDamage finance in the agenda for #COP27 has renewed the fight for justice for communities losing their homes, crops, and income.”
#climatejustice #climatefinance #PayUp4LossAndDamage 💰⚖️ pic.twitter.com/PQgKA91rmb
— Climate Action Network International (CAN) (@CANIntl) November 6, 2022
The second round is however far from being won, as certain voices from the North – United States, EU – are opposed to it.
Especially since, as important as it is in the process, this Climate Conference is also often seen as a COP of transition, between the major meeting that was Glasgow on the subject of the ambition of countries to reduce their footprint carbon, and COP28, which will be the occasion for a global review of the progress made since the Paris Agreement.
►
To read again:
Climate: understanding loss and damage, great expectations from the South at COP27 (1/2)
Loss and damage from climate change: what to expect from COP27?
(2/2)
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
COP27
UN
Egypt
Environment
our selection