Kalain Ho­sein

With the COP27 in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate con­fer­ence set to close in less than 24 hours, its pres­i­dent, HE Sameh Shoukry, yes­ter­day re­vealed that all the big-tick­et items had not yet been re­solved.

“The mit­i­ga­tion work pro­gramme is yet to reach the de­sired out­come. Adap­ta­tion is still held back by pro­ce­dur­al mat­ters. Am­bi­tious out­comes on fi­nance have not yet ma­te­ri­alised. And on loss and dam­age, par­ties are shy­ing away from tak­ing the dif­fi­cult po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions,” Shoukry said in a state­ment.

How­ev­er, world lead­ers re­main di­vid­ed at the 11th hour, when con­sen­sus should be on the cusp.

De­liv­er­ing re­marks short­ly af­ter his trip to the G20 meet­ing in Bali, In­done­sia, Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res called on na­tions to act.

“There is clear­ly a break­down in trust be­tween North and South and be­tween de­vel­oped and emerg­ing economies. This is no time for fin­ger-point­ing. The blame game is a recipe for mu­tu­al­ly as­sured de­struc­tion. I am here to ap­peal to all par­ties to rise to this mo­ment and to the great­est chal­lenge fac­ing hu­man­i­ty,” Guter­res said, call­ing on na­tions to “stand and de­liv­er.”

With flood­ing un­fold­ing across parts of Trinidad for yet an­oth­er day yes­ter­day, the cli­mate cri­sis is al­ready on our doorstep. More ex­treme rain­fall, high­er sea lev­els and warmer tem­per­a­tures all lie with­in T&T’s and the East­ern Caribbean’s fu­ture, based on pro­jec­tions from the In­ter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change’s lat­est re­ports.

Guter­res called on par­ties in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to find “an am­bi­tious and cred­i­ble agree­ment on loss and dam­age and fi­nan­cial sup­port to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.” He said, “The time for talk­ing on loss and dam­age fi­nance is over. We need ac­tion. No one can de­ny the scale of loss and dam­age we see around the globe. The world is burn­ing and drown­ing be­fore our eyes.”

Ear­li­er, in a joint press con­fer­ence with lead­ers from the Al­liance of Small Is­land States, G77 plus Chi­na, which rep­re­sents 134 de­vel­op­ing na­tions, Least De­vel­oped Coun­tries (LD­Cs) and the In­de­pen­dent Al­liance of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (AILAC), Guter­res called on the de­vel­oped na­tions of the world to chan­nel their po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ments in­to po­lit­i­cal ac­tion on loss and dam­age.

There are oth­er is­sues the de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing na­tions are not aligned on.

De­vel­op­ing na­tions al­ready fac­ing coastal ero­sion, ma­jor storms ren­der­ing ar­eas of their land un­in­hab­it­able, droughts and ex­treme tem­per­a­tures, have changed their mes­sag­ing at COP27, stat­ing that every frac­tion of a de­gree mat­ters. Cur­rent­ly, the world has warmed 1.18 de­grees Cel­sius above prein­dus­tri­al lev­els.

Guter­res said in his ad­dress, “The 1.5 tar­get is not sim­ply about keep­ing a goal alive—it’s about keep­ing peo­ple alive. I see the will to keep to the 1.5 goal—but we must en­sure that com­mit­ment is ev­i­dent in the COP27 out­come.

“Fos­sil fu­el ex­pan­sion is hi­jack­ing hu­man­i­ty. Any hope of meet­ing the 1.5 tar­get re­quires a step change in emis­sions re­duc­tions. We can­not close the emis­sions gap with­out an ac­cel­er­a­tion in the de­ploy­ment of re­new­ables.”

In his open­ing re­marks to COP27 near­ly two weeks ago, Guter­res said, “The world is on a high­way to cli­mate hell with our foot on the ac­cel­er­a­tor.”

Yes­ter­day, he added, “Re­new­ables are the ex­it ramp from the cli­mate hell high­way.”

The Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al called on na­tions to act on cli­mate fi­nanc­ing for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries by meet­ing the US$100 bil­lion pledge.

“It means clar­i­ty on how the dou­bling of adap­ta­tion fi­nance will be de­liv­ered through a cred­i­ble roadmap. And it means act­ing on the con­sen­sus to re­form mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment banks and in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions,” he said.

Guter­res’ char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly dire speech con­clud­ed with one last ap­peal.

“The cli­mate clock is tick­ing, and trust keeps erod­ing. The par­ties at COP27 have a chance to make a dif­fer­ence—here and now. I urge them to act—and act quick­ly.”

This sto­ry was pro­duced as part of the 2022 Cli­mate Change Me­dia Part­ner­ship, a jour­nal­ism fel­low­ship or­gan­ised by In­ternews’ Earth Jour­nal­ism Net­work and the Stan­ley Cen­tre for Peace and Se­cu­ri­ty.