By John Ikani
The world’s biggest summit on climate change kicked off in Egypt on Sunday, with more than 120 world leaders gathered to tackle a range of pressing environmental issues following a year of heat waves, droughts, typhoons and flooding.
The climate summit, held in the southern city of Sharm El-Sheikh, is scheduled to continue until Nov.18.
About 30,000 people will attend the two-week summit, known as COP27, though some activists are staying away over concerns about Egypt’s rights record.
Most heads of state attending COP27 are expected to participate in the so-called implementation summit, to be held on Nov.7 and 8.
COP27 will really begin in earnest on Monday with a World Leaders’ Summit, when heads of state and government leaders deliver five-minute addresses outlining what they want from the meeting.
Meanwhile, the rest of the days will be spent on dealing with major climate issues issues through workshops, round tables and discussions.
It is worthwhile to note that COP stands for the Conference of the Parties and is the name commonly used for the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference.
This year marks the 27th meeting, drawing leaders from nearly every country on Earth to negotiate goals for fighting climate change.
Each year, COP aims to get all parties to agree on a final document that pledges to take further action.
The past year has seen extreme weather regularly linked to climate change.
The event comes as scientists warn that rises in the Earth’s temperature must be kept well below 2 degrees Celsius — and preferably under 1.5 degrees — compared to the 1800s to avoid life-threatening consequences.
But a United Nations report in October said that current efforts would lead to warming of as much as 2.6 degrees by the end of the century.
One of the key points of this COP27 will be the losses and damages due to climate change, something that was already focused on last year in Glasgow.
A large number of countries advocated last year for a fund dedicated to the damage and losses caused by climate change, which, however, was rejected by several developed nations, including the United States.
In addition to the issue of providing financing for the least developed countries, this summit will also focus on action to reduce greenhouse gases.
A failure to make progress in cutting emission of greenhouse gases emissions could cause the Earth’s temperature to rise by over 2.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
There is an urgent need to reinforce current climate policies, which still fall well short of being adequate to meet the targets of COP21 in Paris 2015, which sought to limit temperature rise to less than 2 degrees and ideally 1.5 degrees, the UN warned a week ago.
