Status: 11/06/2022 1:53 p.m
In Egypt, the 27th UN climate conference with representatives from more than 190 countries opened with urgent appeals. Above all, the host country also wants to focus on financial issues in the deliberations.
The 27th UN climate conference has opened in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The focus of the two-week COP27 is the concrete implementation of the goals for more climate protection agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, above all limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Alok Sharma, President of last year’s COP26 conference in Glasgow, is well aware that there is still a long way to go before this goal can actually be met. “I fully recognize the scale of the challenge that lies ahead,” he said in his opening remarks. Time is pressing: Entire regions of the world have already become uninhabitable, and the pressure on people who have to move as a result is almost unimaginable. That is why this year’s conference must “revolve around concrete action”.
“Learn lessons from environmental disasters”
Sharma symbolically handed over his post as COP President to his successor, Egyptian Foreign Minister Samih Schukri. He too warned that the world must learn lessons from destructive environmental catastrophes such as those in Pakistan, Africa, parts of Europe and the USA. And Schukri warned: “There will be no winners in zero-sum games.”
The head of the UN climate secretariat, Simon Stiell, also called on all participating countries: “No one can only be a passenger on this trip. This is a signal that times have changed.” And furthermore, Stiell appealed:
The heart of the implementation is that everyone, everywhere in the world, is doing everything in their power every day to tackle the climate crisis.
finance in focus
Egypt wants to use the COP27 to set its own priorities and has already made it clear that it should be about financing international climate protection. The developing countries demand their own fund to compensate for climate damage and losses. “The countries don’t have the means to deal with it, and the international response so far simply doesn’t match the challenges,” says Egypt’s chief negotiator, Mohamed Nasr.
“Loss and Damage” is the conference term for this item. This has been the subject of debate for years, so far with meager results from the point of view of those affected.
As early as 2009, the industrialized countries had pledged to mobilize 100 billion dollars annually from 2020 to help the global South with an energy transition and to enable them to adapt to the already inevitable consequences of climate change. The promise has not been kept. It was a maximum of 83 billion – and even this calculation is controversial.
“The world has long had technology and know-how”
The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hoesung Lee, also urged that poorer countries be provided with enough money to take action against climate change. The warnings from science that the climate change must finally succeed could not be “sharper, stronger and more sobering”, emphasized Lee and pointed out that the world has long had the necessary technology and know-how to realize the climate protection goals . Both must only be applied decisively enough.
Pressure had already been built up in Glasgow last year, other states would have to submit new and stricter national climate protection targets – as the USA and the EU have done. Only 24 did that this year – and most of them only satisfied the form, but made little progress in terms of content. The demand went primarily to China.
Scientists calculate that Beijing will have to step up its efforts to protect the climate and reduce emissions by the middle of the decade, otherwise it will be impossible to meet the 1.5 degree limit. Always gently, this is how the statement by head of state and party leader Xi Jinping was to be interpreted at the recent Communist Party Congress: “We will work actively and carefully to achieve our maximum emissions and climate neutrality,” he said.
How to deal with Russia?
Despite the urgency of climate change, the deliberations in Egypt are also overshadowed by political disputes: the growing tensions between the USA and China, for example, and above all, of course, the participation of Russia after more than eight months of aggressive war against Ukraine.
Right at the start, last year’s President Sharma used his speech to criticize the Russian invasion: “Putin’s brutal and illegal war in Ukraine has brought about multiple global crises: energy and food insecurity, pressure from inflation and a debt spiral.” These crises would have exacerbated already existing vulnerabilities to climate change.
Altogether, representatives from more than 190 countries take part in the COP27. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Federal Development Minister Svenja Schulze, Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) and Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir also want to travel to the world climate conference. Scholz is scheduled to attend COP27 on Monday and Tuesday.