Climate summit: What to expect

COUNTRIES made big pledges at last year’s UN climate conference, but greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

is year’s event in Sharm elSheikh, Egypt, will focus on translating those commitments into action.

is year’s UN climate conference, set for November 6–18, will close out another year marked by record-breaking floods, deadly heat waves, and other extreme weather events on top of a global energy crisis.

Yet representatives gathering in Egypt, for the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) are unlikely to make significant new pledges.

Instead, COP27 is expected to focus on whether countries are following through on commitments made last year.

What are the aims of COP27?

Egypt has framed the 2022 conference as Africa’s COP, and a priority is to increase financing for low- and middle-income countries, which have contributed the least to global emissions but suffer the consequences most severely.

Discussions will likely include the following issues:

Stronger commitments

At the end of COP26, all countries agreed to come to this year’s conference with more aggressive climate plans.

But since then, only 24 countries have newly submitted or updated their targets, which are known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), under the Paris Agreement. UN officials have urged countries to show up to COP27 with greater ambition.

Loss and damage

is refers to the unavoidable consequences of climate change, such as the loss of people’s lives due to extreme weather events or the disappearance of coastal communities due to sea-level rise.

Poorer nations are disproportionately suffering these damages and have asked wealthy nations to compensate them. African countries are on the frontlines of climate change. Extreme weather and disasters are stalling progress towards food security, social wellbeing and economic development.

Advocates of compensation have called for a formal financing system to collect and distribute funds.

e US and the EU have historically opposed such a system.

Adaptation

As emissions continue to rise, developing countries are calling for more funds to help them adapt to the consequences of climate change.

Examples of adaptation include installing early-warning systems for extreme weather events, building heat shelters, and using droughtresistant seeds.

So far, most financing has gone toward mitigation, or efforts to reduce emissions.

Climate finance

Over a decade ago, wealthy nations pledged to mobilise US$100 billion per year starting in 2020 to help poorer countries reduce emissions and adapt to the worsening effects of climate change.

But so far, they’ve only raised about US$90 billion altogether. Low- and middle-income countries

— many of which are strapped with debt — will press for more financing from governments, corporations and multilateral financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.

ey also want more of this funding to go toward adaptation.

Private-sector commitments

Officials will likely put pressure on corporations that attend COP27 to do more.

Last year, hundreds of financial institutions joined the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

But several firms have quit, and others — such as JP Morgan and Bank of America — have threatened to walk away.

Many of those that remain in the coalition have not published plans to reach that goal.

Have countries made progress on the goals they set at COP26? Not enough to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, which means the world’s average temperature will also continue to climb.

By the end of the decade, the world is expected to miss the Paris Agreement’s target — to prevent the world’s average temperature from rising 1,5°C (2,7°F) above preindustrial levels. Scientists and UN officials have warned that exceeding 1,5°C of warming will have catastrophic consequences, including devastating sea-level rise, longer and more intense heat waves, and widespread species loss.

Among the COP26 pledges was a commitment by more than one hundred countries to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Since then, more than a dozen other countries joined the pledge, and the US and the EU launched an initiative to reduce methane emissions in the energy sector.

China—the top methane emitter in 2021—has not signed the pledge, though some observers expect it to do so during COP27.

Some countries said last year that they will stop using coal, a leading source of emissions, by 2030.

But emissions from coal are expected to increase by 2% in 2022 compared to last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

e energy crisis prompted by Russia’s war in Ukraine is partly to blame for that, as some European countries that previously relied on Russian natural gas, such as Germany, have returned to burning coal. China, which is the top emitter of greenhouse gases annually, continues to build coal-fired power plants.

Another pledge was to halt deforestation by 2030.

Brazil was among the countries that committed to do so, but deforestation of its Amazon Rainforest was higher during the first nine months of 2022 than in any of the same time periods in the last 15 years.

ere have been a few positive developments since last year.

Countries are adding more renewable energy (mainly solar and wind) to their electric grids than ever before.

And the IEA expects that the war in Ukraine will spark a greater shift toward clean energy, including nuclear power, with investment projected to increase by US$2 trillion per year by 2030. — www.cfr.org.