The biggest climate event of the year began yesterday, 06 November, in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. This year, the agenda of the COP27 will primarily focus on the issue of policy implementation; including the thorny topics of green financing, mitigation, adaptation and loss and damages affecting developing countries. However, there are still difficult questions facing the international community in its efforts to combat climate change which will need to be addressed throughout the event.
The BIC's Climate Security Analyst, Clémentine Lienard said:
"This year, the COP aims to turn climate commitments into concrete actions, as reiterated yesterday by the UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell, who seeks the full implementation of the Paris Agreements. However, the COP27 has started off on the wrong foot: while only less than 30 countries have heightened their national climate targets ahead of the event since COP26, the last report from UN Climate Change states that current climate pledges will barely be enough to contain global temperatures under 2.5°C by 2100. Advancing concrete efforts on the topics of mitigation and adaptation will hopefully be key positive results of the fifteen days of deliberations. But the success of this COP will mostly depend on the outcomes of discussions on green finance and loss and damage, points of dissensions that are deepening long-standing disagreements between developed and developing countries."
For the past year, the BIC has been closely monitoring climate action developments in the MENA region ahead of the COP27, and will continue to follow the marathon of negotiations taking place in the next 15 days between world leaders.