COP27 kicks off with focus on finance and implementation of agreements
The COP27 Climate Summit kicks off this Sunday and will be held until 18 November in the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheikh, with its sights set on implementing the legacy of the previous COP in Glasgow and financing for the least developed countries in the fight against climate change.
The Arab country expects the UN conference in Sharm el Sheikh, a city in the south of the Sinai Peninsula that has been shielded for this occasion, to receive more than 40,000 attendees, which it believes will be the most attended climate summit in history, according to the Egyptian Presidency of COP27.
At least a hundred heads of state have already confirmed their participation in the summit, including US President Joe Biden, Spanish President Pedro Sánchez and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, although some aspects of the agenda will be finalised later in the day.
The vast majority of the heads of state attending COP27 are expected to participate in the so-called implementation summit on 7-8 November.
Meanwhile, the rest of the days will be divided into thematic blocks, with water as a novelty in a climate summit, in which different workshops, round tables and talks will be held.
One of the key points of this COP27 will be loss and damage, something that was already in focus last year in Glasgow.
A large number of countries, especially from the South, called last year for the creation of a dedicated climate finance fund for loss and damage caused by climate change, but some developed nations, such as the United States, rejected this measure.
In addition to funding for the least developed countries, the summit will work to take action to reduce greenhouse gases.
The time for #ClimateAction is now. We all have a role to play.#TogetherForImplementationhttps://t.co/XazYZQ3dyT pic.twitter.com/yUpn2vX2Dz
— COP27 (@COP27P) October 29, 2022
In fact, the lack of progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions could cause the Earth's temperature to rise by 2.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century compared to the pre-industrial era, unless current climate policies are strengthened, still far below the goals of the Paris Agreement (2015), which seeks to limit the temperature rise to less than 2 degrees and, ideally, 1.5, as warned by the UN a week ago.
Moreover, this summit is already fraught with controversy over the issue of human rights in a country that holds thousands of political prisoners in jail and does not allow protests, an issue that has caused climate justice at such conferences to be rethought.
Egypt has chosen to reserve a so-called "civic" space in the "green zone", far removed from the "blue zone" and centre of climate discussions.
This has led many environmental activists, such as the popular Greta Thunberg, to boycott the summit.
