Renson Mwakandana
The two-week COP27 conference that was hosted in the Egyptian tourist city of Sharm el-Sheikh had world leaders make visits, corporate executives make recommendations, and almost 200 countries bargain over the course of future international climate change action.
After years of opposition from wealthy nations, governments finally decided to establish a fund to compensate developing nations for “loss and destruction” brought on by storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires that are caused by climate change.
It will probably take many years to iron out the finer points of how the fund will be operated, including how the money will be distributed and which nations are likely to be eligible, despite the fact that it was the most notable achievement of the negotiations.
Some people criticised the final COP27 agreement for not doing enough to reduce emissions that harm the climate, including by establishing more ambitious national objectives and reducing reliance on fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.
Some nations have sought to phase out, or at least phase down, the use of all fossil fuels, even though the treaty language called for steps to phase down usage of unabated coal power and phase out wasteful fossil fuel subsidies. But the use of fossil fuels was supported for the immediate future during the keynote addresses and the closing negotiations.
On the other hand, United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan declared his nation will continue to supply oil and gas “for as long as the world is in need.” The United Arab Emirates is hosting the COP28 climate meeting in 2018.
CEOs of oil companies attended this year’s meeting after being marginalised during COP26. Despite gas corporations being sued in the US for making such statements, natural gas executives were promoting themselves as climate champions.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that they are experiencing an increase in climate impacts like drought, several African countries with low access to energy advocated for their right to exploit their natural gas reserves. And with this year’s energy crisis brought on by the Ukraine war, fossil fuel phase-out clubs established around the Glasgow conference last year were finding it difficult to attract new members.
Crowds cheered as Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva proclaimed that “Brazil is back” in the worldwide fight against climate change and promised that the Amazon area will play home to COP30 in 2025.
Since defeating right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro in the country’s presidential election last month, the leftist leader has only traveled within Brazil. Bolsonaro presided over the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest and refused to host the 2019 climate summit that was originally scheduled for Brazil.
Brazil also launched a partnership to work together on forest preservation, joining Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in doing so. The trilateral partnership was created during ten years of intermittent discussions that persisted even as the national forest policies and leaderships of the nations changed. They are intended to compel wealthy countries to pay for the protection of forests.
As the COP started its second week, Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Joe Biden of the United States met in Indonesia for the G20, where they decided to resume their climate change collaboration after a lengthy pause brought on by tensions over Taiwan.
Xie Zhenhua, the senior climate negotiator for China, earlier informed reporters that informal discussions with John Kerry, his American counterpart and “close friend for 25 years,” had resumed.
Xie stated that he anticipates continuing direct climate change work with Kerry beyond COP27, presumably once Kerry has recovered from COVID.
The COP27 negotiations give hope that something will happen even if the world of finance has not been able to offer enough money to assist nations in reducing their carbon emissions and adjusting their economy to the effects of global warming.
A plan to overhaul major public lenders like the World Bank so they may take more risk and lend more money is one of the measures that is expected to free up more money. Countries believe that by doing this, more private investors will participate.
A breakthrough agreement was reached during the meetings between nations including the United States and Japan and private investors to assist Indonesia in making the transition away from coal-fired power generation more swiftly gives optimism for quicker action.
