COP 27: "A Highway to Climate Hell"

Every newspaper is talking about the climate summit that is happening from the 6th to the 18th of November in Egypt: the COP 27.  In this post, we will explain to you what is being discussed, and why it is so important. 

🤷‍♀️ What is COP? 

Since 1992, there have been 27 climate summits called “Conference of the Parties”. Almost every country on Earth is attending, to discuss how to tackle climate change. 

The conference brings together all levels of society: heads of state and ministers, along with climate activists, civil society representatives, NGOs and CEOs. Therefore, COPs are the perfect opportunity to: 

             🌏 Review the current steps nations are taking to face climate change 

             🌏 Establish new strategies to reduce emissions and achieve Net Zero worldwide 

             🌏 Define new targets to mitigate the predicted outcomes of climate change 

             🌏 Share solutions and brainstorm ideas to give a world response 

During these meetings, nations have signed important agreements, as they did the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 or the Paris Agreement in 2015, in which all the countries of the world agreed to take actions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. 

   Source: New Yorker 

📍 COP 27 

On Monday 7th, the first day of the World Leaders' Summit at COP27, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed governments with these impactful words: 

"We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator." 

This year, the conference is taking place right, smack in the middle of an energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. In addition to this, we have experienced one of the warmest years and extreme weather events all around the planet. If that isn’t sufficient enough evidence, scientists keep repeating that our world is not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions. Hence, it’s more urgent than ever that governments commit to pledges and solutions and start taking action. 

The topics planned this year are: Finance, Science, Youth and Future Generations, Decarbonization, Adaptation and Agriculture, Gender, Water, Civil Society, Energy, and Biodiversity and Solutions, the newest topic of these Conferences. 

🇿🇦 Africa, the protagonist 

COP 27 is also focusing on Africa: African COP. This large continent is one of the most vulnerable to the crisis, facing enormous threats such as severe draughts and fires, increase of sea level, floods, extreme rainfalls and loss of biodiversity. 

In particular, during COP27, it is expected that the $100 billion fund to help the most vulnerable countries, agreed last year at COP 26 in Glasgow, will finally become a reality. 

As Kenyan president, William Ruto said "Africa contributes less than 3% of the pollution responsible for climate change but is the most severely impacted by the ensuing crisis". 
 

   
🛀 COP 27, a greenwashing exercise for governments? 

Many activists think that the conference is a distraction where governments set future goals that they are never going to achieve. Greta Thunberg is not attending Cop27; she said, “it’s a forum for greenwashing with unacceptable restrictions on civil society. At the very least, we need our leaders to start including all our actual emissions in our targets, statistics, and policies. Before they do that, any mention of vague, future goals is nothing but a distracting waste of time.”  

 Source: Cartoon Movement, Anne Derenne  

The only truth is that we need to act as a global community to tackle climate change, and we need to act now. 

The Irish newspaper The Journal will be covering COP27 in Egypt this month 

COP 27 United Nations website

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Thank you for reading today!  

 The FSG Team 💚