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What is COP27 and What Should We Pray For
On November 6th the participants of the UN Framework Agreement On Climate Change will meet in Sharm El-Sheik in Egypt for the 27th Conference of The Parties. The confer-ence will run from November 6th to 18th. According to the UN website, the purpose of COP 27 is to build on the suc-cesses of previous COPs. To be honest, I don’t know what that means. The only “success” I am aware of was the agreement in Paris, to limit global warming to 1.5 Centi-grade above the 1850 average temperature, or 2 degrees at worst. (What this means is that we need to reduce atmos-pheric carbon dioxide concentration to below 394 ppm by 2030, or stop it ever rising above 446 ppm respectively). The only other possible success was that richer countries agreed to provide finance to poorer countries for climate mitigation, e.g. flood defences and so forth. Unfortunately the money has not yet been paid, and it looks like COP27 will be focused on this question.
The provisional agenda is at: https://unfccc.int/documents/603812
Some people have raised concerns about the Egyptian Gov-ernment using COP 27 to greenwash its activities. See, for example:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/18/greenwashing-police-state-egypt-cop27-masquerade-naomi-klein-climate-crisis
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What I would like COP 27 to achieve has been summarized by CAFOD (see https://cafod.org.uk/Campaign/Climate/What-is-COP27 ):
• Set up and contribute to a fund that will support commu-nities whose homes and livelihoods are being lost to or damaged by the climate crisis;
• Stop supporting new fossil fuel projects and increase sup-port for low-income countries to develop cheaper and cleaner renewable energy sources;
• Pledge to take steps to fix our broken food system by committing to reduce emissions from intensive agricul-ture and by providing funding for low-income countries to make food production and local supply chains more resili-ent in the face of the climate crisis;
• Fulfil overdue pledges to provide $100bn each year in cli-mate finance and ramp up ambition in future targets, in-cluding to commit to devote 50 per cent of climate fi-nance to adaptation and to ensure that this finance is tru-ly ‘new and additional’ and doesn’t come at the expense of humanitarian and development aid.
These four items will be the focus of my prayers until the end of the conference. In my view this is the world’s last chance to meet the first Paris criteria.
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me on
Michael