Cop 27 of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt has officially started, which will also be attended tomorrow by the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloniaccompanied by the Minister for Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto Fratin. The COP of Contradictions, which will be attended by two hundred delegates from as many countries until November 18th. There are two main objectives: to limit global warming to 1.5ºC (a venture that no one can guarantee today and that is becoming less and less available year after year) and to respond to the needs of communities that are already suffering very severely Impacts, both in terms of financing mitigation and adaptation measures and with an ad hoc financial structure for the losses and damages caused by climate change. The highest hopes are pinned on the second goal at this particular historical moment. In fact, at the opening of UN conferenceThe World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published the report “State of the Global Climate in 2022”, states that the last 8 years have been the hottest on record, and that the increase in the average temperature, which is about 1.15 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in 2022, is in turn due to the concentrations of the main greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide) reaching record levels in 2021 and growing steadily . From their reduction, however, to the COP 27, which records the return Brazil After the Bolsonaro era, this will have to be discussed in the absence of the President RussiaVladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and also the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, the countries with the least ambitious net-zero emissions targets, set at 2060 for the top two and 2070 for India and among the largest emitters. On the CO2 front, China currently ranks first, responsible for nearly 33% of emissions, while India and Russia are fourth and fifth on the list.
Loss & Damage at the heart of the discussion – As for the second goal, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who is chairing the conference, said in his speech that after 48 hours of intense negotiations, an agreement was reached to start a conference Financing negotiations to cover damage caused by extraordinary weather events. In short, the so-called “Loss & Damage”, which is being officially discussed for the first time, with the aim of making a final decision “at the latest by 2024”. For this reason, avoiding tension, the official start of the summit was postponed for more than an hour from the very first moments of the conference. Good news? It will depend not only on meeting this deadline, but of course also on the content of the final decision, which the most vulnerable countries have been waiting too long for since the application dates from the early 1990s. The commitment of developed countries to collectively mobilize $100 billion a year from public and private sources by 2020 dates back to the Cop15 in Copenhagen in 2009. commitment never respected. According to OECD data, a maximum of 83.3 billion was reached in 2020. the losses and damage from climate change caused by rich countries. All pieces of the climate finance jigsaw puzzle where, as history teaches, it is easier to make announcements than deliver on commitments. One of the challenges of these days will be to accurately distinguish all steps forward from the proclamations of different countries. And so is Egypt, where COP is based and where more than twenty prisons have been built in just over a decade (which also house environmental activists) and where there is tight government control over the provision of information, including to the delegates regarding the cop.
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Complaint from Human Rights Watch – On the other hand, unclear events have come to light weeks before the start of the COP. And in these hours, Human Rights Watch (HRW) is decrying how dozens of people in Egypt have been arrested for wanting to demonstrate at the summit, while authorities have deployed a battery of cameras to quell the protest. According to HRW’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director Adam Coogle, “It is clear that the Egyptian government” led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi “has no intention of relaxing security measures or restricting freedom of expression or assembly.” to allow”. . Among the arrests is that of the Indian anti-climate change activist Ajit Rajagopal, as he prepared for an eight-day march from Cairo to Sharm el Sheikh. Rajagopal was released the next day after international criticism. South Sinai Governor Khaled Fouda warned that security forces would only allow concentrations in designated areas away from the summit. “Anyone who is not registered cannot enter,” he told Sada al-Balad TV channel. Not only. HRW reminds that the Egyptian government requires all participants to download an application that collects personal information and requests access to the camera, microphone and mobile location service. Meanwhile, Luise Amtsberg, the federal government’s human rights commissioner, wrote a note about the case of the democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, on hunger strike, and his lawyer Mohammed al-Baker, both “imprisoned under sometimes very difficult conditions”. All of this does not draw attention to the problem of global warming, but directly affects it. Because without information and without the pressure and complaints about an ambitious climate policy (not just the Egyptian one), there is a risk that we will proceed too slowly. Meanwhile, a third of Pakistan has gone under water in recent months.
The state of the global climate – “The greater the warming, the worse the impact – explained Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Petteri Taalas, commenting on the data of the report on the state of global climate defined by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres” Chronicle of Climate Chaos”. The 2022 drought left 19 million people starving in East Africa, while floods in Pakistan have killed 1,700 people but affected 33 million people, eight of whom have been forced to flee their villages. Rainfall in east Africa has been below average for four consecutive seasons, the longest in 40 years. In Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia they were in a situation of food crisis before June 2022 between 18.4 and 19.3 million people. Southern Africa, on the other hand, and in particular the Madagascar, was hit by a series of hurricanes earlier this year. Hurricane Ian caused death and destruction in September Cuba and in Floridawhile China it has had the longest and longest running heat wave on record. in the AntarcticOn February 25, the smallest extent of ice since measurements was recorded: only 1.92 million square kilometers. 2022 broke the 2003 record for melting of the Alpine ice sheets with thickness losses of 3 to 4 meters. For example, the average sea level rose by about 3.4 millimeters per year over the thirty years from 1993 to 2022, and the rate of rise has doubled from 1993 to the present. From January 2020 to August 2022 alone, the average sea level rose by 10 millimeters. The WMO recalled that “today we have such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the 1.5 degree target of the Paris Agreement is hardly achievable”.
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The WHO warning – But climate change will also lead to more. On the first day of the conference, the World Health Organization states: “Climate change is expected to occur between 2030 and 2050 250,000 more deaths per year from malnutrition‘, diseases such as ‘malaria and diarrhea’ and ‘heat stress’, while by 2030 it is estimated that the direct health impacts of climate change alone will cost between $2 and $4 billion a year. The director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explains: “Climate change is making millions of people around the world sick or more susceptible to disease. And increasingly destructive weather events are disproportionately affecting poor and marginalized communities.”