“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Monday 7 November at the opening of the 27th UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
Recalling the urgency of the situation, Mr Guterres said that the current generation was “losing (...) the fight of our lives”.
“Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible”, he deplored.
While the Paris Climate Agreement adopted in 2015 sets the goal of containing the rise in global average temperature to well below 2°C by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels, striving for no more than 1.5°C, a recent UN report has shown that the world is on track for 2.8°C of warming (see EUROPE 13053/5).
The European Commission therefore intends to use COP27 to “push for the implementation of existing commitments in order to move from ambitious words to concrete actions”, the institution said in a statement calling on all parties to take concrete measures to limit warming to 1.5°C.
Led by Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President in charge of the European Green Deal, the Commission’s negotiating team hopes, among other things, to agree on a work programme to step up the implementation of climate change mitigation during this decade.
For his part, Mr Guterres called for a “pact” in which all countries will make an extra effort to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030.
One of the aims of the pact would be to end dependence on fossil fuels and the construction of new coal-fired power plants, phasing out coal in OECD countries by 2030 and everywhere else by 2040.
The impact of the war in Ukraine
While the UN Secretary General is calling for more ambition, some fear that the 2 weeks of negotiations between the parties will not lead to any significant progress at the end of COP27 on 18 November, due in particular to the armed Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Aware of this risk, Mr Guterres called on governments not to divert their attention from climate change: “Today’s crises cannot be an excuse for backsliding or greenwashing”.
He was joined by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said that “everything that was said in Glasgow (at COP26) remains and must remain valid”, as “the climate should not be the adjustment variable for the war launched by Russia on Ukrainian soil”. He added: “We will not sacrifice our climate commitments under the energy threat from Russia”.
Loss and damage on the agenda
Beyond the need to mitigate climate change, one of the major issues at this COP will be the recognition of loss and damage, i.e. the damage caused by climate disruption that cannot be avoided by either emission reduction actions or adaptation to climate change.
The countries of the South, which are particularly affected by the impacts of climate change (floods, droughts, forest fires, etc.) are calling in particular for the creation of a financial facility dedicated to this issue. They achieved a first victory with the inclusion of the issue of loss and damage on the COP27 agenda.
However, discussions on the creation of a specific fund are likely to be particularly difficult, due to opposition from some major economies such as the EU and the US.
On this point, Mr Guterres wants the UN conference to produce “a clear, time-bound roadmap reflective of the scale and urgency of the challenge”. In his view, this roadmap should include effective institutional arrangements for financing.
He also called on governments to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies to redirect some of this money to countries suffering loss and damage from the climate crisis. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)