COP27 ends with some progress but many challenges to “keep 1.5 alive”
Tue 22 November 2022
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The 2022 climate change conference, COP27, held in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, ended with some progress on key issues - particularly loss and damage - but with many challenges unresolved or in urgent need of accelerated progress.
Agreement was reached close to the end of the 12-day conference on the highly challenging topic of loss and damage: Developing countries have been seeking financial assistance to rescue and rebuild the physical and social infrastructure of countries devastated by extreme weather – for nearly 30 years. Agreement was reached on the principle of establishing a fund, but not on how the finance should be provided or which countries should supply it.
COP27 reaffirmed the agreement to focus on limiting climate change to a 'safe' 1.5C limit, despite attempts to weaken or scrap the ambition. However, a resolution that emissions should peak by 2025 was removed from the final text and few countries agreed to strengthen emissions reduction commitments they had made at last year's COP26 in Glasgow.
Several countries, led by India, supported a resolution on the phase down of the use of fossil fuels, building on the commitment to end the use of coal, reached in Glasgow. The issue was the subject of intense debate towards the end of the Conference but, in the end, the wording remained the same as had been concluded in the final text at COP26.
The final text did contain a provision to boost 'low-emissions energy'. The wording is imprecise and could mean the use of wind and solar farms, nuclear reactors and - potentially - coal-fired power stations fitted with carbon capture and storage. It might also be interpreted to mean gas, which has lower emissions than coal, but still a major fossil fuel.
There was progress, at least in the discussion, on changes to enable the World Bank and other publicly funded finance institutions to help poor countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Leading UK climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern has calculated that the developing world will need £2tn a year from 2030. However, this is only about 5% more than the investment they would require anyway, much of which would go into high carbon infrastructure. There are suggestions that the World Bank could provide about half of those funds.
There was limited progress too in terms of support for measures to enable poorer countries to become more resilient to climate change impacts. A promise of a $100bn transfer to be provided from rich to pooer countries by 2020 - though still not fulfilled - included about $20bn for adaptation. These funds are to be used to build flood defences, preserve wetlands, restore mangroves and regrow forests.
The final text agreed at COP27 included reference to 'tipping points' and an acknowledgment that climate does not warm in a gradual and straight-line fashion, but that there's a risk of feedback loops with rapidly escalating effects. There was also a reference to “the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”. It has been notable that medical experts are now playing a more prominent role in climate talks and are drawing an increasingly clear link between global heating and health.
While there was agreement on “keeping 1.5 alive” at COP27 and there have been positive advances on technology - including falling prices for renewable energy - with past agreement by countries to cut methane (a potent greenhouse gas) emissions. However, attempts to agree a phase out of coal, oil, natural gas and to end all fossil fuel subsidies failed. There has been little strengthening of the commitments by countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions over the past year.
Many scientists are now saying that the world will overshoot the 1.5 C limit, potentially by a large amount. The World Meteorological Organization estimates global temperatures have a 50-50 chance of reaching 1.5C of warming, at least temporarily, in the next five years.
Unlike at COP26, COP27 did not include a day dedicated to focusing on transport issues, an omission criticised by the UK's Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) amongst others.
Alok Sharma, the UK's president of COP26 said that COP27 was a battle even to maintain the commitments made in Glasgow, never mind build on them. “Peaking emissions by 2025 is not in this text. Follow-through on the phasedown of coal is not in this text. The phasedown of all fossil fuels is not in this text,” he said.
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