“Cooperate against climate change or die”, the dramatic message that opened the Climate Summit in Egypt

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“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or die. Either a pact for climate solidarity, or a collective suicide pactWith this dramatic message, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, opened the Egypt Climate Summit (COP27), the UN’s annual climate event, in Sharm el Sheikh.

Egyptian President Abdelfatah Al Sisi opened, in turn, within the framework of COP27, the so-called Implementation Summit two days; a meeting of more than 80 heads of state and government and high-level government representatives from around the worldwhere they will be established trading guidelines for this climate summit, which ends on November 18.

The summit began with pressure from the poorest countries seeking compensation from the most polluting nations for the damage caused.

It is precisely because of the pressure to improve the financing of the most vulnerable countriesdevastated by the effects of warming, which Guterres said the time has come to reach a “deal” before a hundred leaders gathered in Sharm el Sheikh.

“We cannot accept that our attention is not on climate change” despite “the war in Ukraine and other conflicts”, because “climate change has its own calendar”, warned the UN chief.



More than 100 world leaders participate in the Climate Summit in Egypt. Photo: EFE

“We have seen one catastrophe after another. As soon as we recover from one, another comes,” lamented the host al Sisi.

The UN’s annual climate event will be a new stage in the usual tussle between industrialized and developing countriesbasically around the money that must be allocated to adapt to changes, reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and pay for the inventory of damages and losses.

“The United States and China must respond” to the challenge since the Europeans are “the only ones who pay,” Macron declared in a meeting with young people, before the plenary. The large emerging countries “must quickly abandon” coal as an energy source, demanded the French president.

El president bowed, Xi Jinping, will not attend COP27, which will debate all these issues until November 18. US President Joe Biden will come for a few hours on November 11.

The countries hardest hit by climate crises are pressing for compensation from the most polluting nations.  Photo: AP


The countries hardest hit by climate crises are pressing for compensation from the most polluting nations. Photo: AP

In Sharm el Sheikh there are several Latin American leaders, such as the Colombian Gustavo Petro and Venezuelan Nicolás Maduroand the arrival of the Brazilian president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is expected later.

Compensation, a topic of intense debate

After intense negotiations, the countries agreed to discuss in Egypt the creation of a specific fund for mitigate the effects of droughts, floods and extreme weather events.

It is not about compensating poor countries, insist the industrialized nations, which are the ones that have historically massively emitted greenhouse gases, responsible for climate change.

The majority of the member countries of the COP, grouped in the so-called G77, currently led by Pakistan, consider instead that yes we can talk about compensationand that they must be delivered as soon as possible.

A village ruined by a flood in Pakistan.  Compensation for damage caused by climate change will be a central theme of the summit.  Photo: AP


A village ruined by a flood in Pakistan. Compensation for damage caused by climate change will be a central theme of the summit. Photo: AP

But the fact that there is going to be talk of “damages and losses” in Sharm el Sheikh does not mean that this fund is going to be created. The countries still have two years to continue negotiating.

mistrust reignsespecially since the industrialized countries have still not met the objective of mobilizing 100,000 million dollars a year to help the poor to cut their emissions and also to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Added to the financial issue is the primary concern of cut greenhouse gas emissions of the greenhouse effect, in a context revolutionized by the energy supply crisis in Europe, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the renewed gas boom.

Since last year, fewer than 30 countries have strengthened their emission reduction targets, despite the common commitment of the almost 200 members of the COP.

The entrance to the site where the Climate Summit is taking place in Egypt.  Photo: AFP


The entrance to the site where the Climate Summit is taking place in Egypt. Photo: AFP

Climate indicators in red

With all the climate indicators in the red -record emissions in 2021, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, rise in the level of the oceans, temperature record in the last eight years-, the summit is announced as a delicate balance exercise between the demand to cut emissions, and the argument of developing countries that the most industrialized cannot deny them the right to exploit their hydrocarbons now.

Time is pressing more and more, since according to recent UN forecasts, warming could reach +2.4ºC by the year 2100 and even +2.8ºC if the current trajectory continues.

Levels much higher than the +1.5 ºC recommended by the 2015 Paris Agreement, and which is still in force despite the fact that the temperature has already risen by 1.2 ºC compared to the pre-industrial era.

Security measures are important at the conference venue, a seaside resort nestled between the desert and the Red Sea. The Human Rights Watch organization assured that they have arrested dozens of people who called to demonstrate.

Al Gore, one of the world's most active voices in protesting climate change, spoke in Egypt.  Photo: Bloomberg


Al Gore, one of the world’s most active voices in protesting climate change, spoke in Egypt. Photo: Bloomberg

Protests over the lack of a financing mechanism

The Climate Action Network, Greenpeace and Power Shift Africa denounced in a press conference that despite the fact that the issue of loss and damage related to global warming was included in the COP27 agenda, there is no established mechanism for its financing.

“Unfortunately, the only way I can summarize how COP27 is going is with two words: poor startsaid Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow.

The Kenyan denounced that despite the fact that this COP is being held in Africa, whose countries are among those that suffer the most from climate change, this summit has not given the opportunity to “mobilize the financing that vulnerable countries need to be able to address damages and losses.

Likewise, he accused the main world economies, especially the European ones, of “harassing vulnerable countries so that they accept a two-year window to negotiate” an agreement that would not include “compensation and accountability of historical polluting countries “.

“We cannot allow COP27 to become a farce. We cannot let it happen,” said Adow, who also recalled that with the war in Ukraine, the countries that at the Glasgow summit last year committed to ending the financing of hydrocarbons, now “they want turn Africa into Europe’s gas station“.

Source: AFP and EFE

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