Days 1 and 2 of COP27 - "Finance makes or breaks the programme of work that we have ahead of us.”

Day 1

“Together for implementation – just and ambitious” is the hashtag of COP27, the major international climate summit which got under way in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh on 6 November.

The opening ceremony saw COP26 President Alok Sharma of the UK, which hosted the summit last year in Glasgow, hand the role over for COP27 to Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. In his speech Alok Sharma asked 'How many more wake-up calls do leaders need?’ and went to state that “we know that we have reached a point where finance makes or breaks the programme of work that we have ahead of us.”

The defining issue at this year’s COP is likely to be loss and damage. ‘Loss and damage’ refers to the adverse effects of climate change on countries, particularly those most vulnerable, in the form of extreme weather events, sea level rise, increasing temperatures, and its other severe impacts.

How loss and damage is interpreted by many, though, is that richer, developed countries should pay poorer nations reparations for harm done by emissions, as the countries most affected by climate change tend to be those who did the least to cause it.

Seen as a critical human rights issue, the treatment of loss and damage (it only made it onto the agenda after much brokerage last night) has sparked fears that developed countries will attempt to avoid any liability or compensation, and that delays will result in continued hardship by those severely affected regions: at COP26 last year, the EU and US both refused to back calls by the G77 coalition of developing countries for a dedicated Finance Facility for loss and damage.

Day 2

More than 100 heads of states and governments arrived for the World Leaders Summit on Monday, the two-day gathering that kicks off the fortnight-long conference. Among them was Ireland's Taoiseach Micheál Martin whose speech is due on Tuesday 8 November. Other heads of state included:

• Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, who among others called for major reform of the World Bank and IMF to deliver more much more climate funding
• Emmanuel Macron, president of France, who backed these calls and said that we must not sacrifice our climate commitments to the energy crisis caused by the war in the Ukraine. Macron also spoke of the need for “energy sobriety”, to transition away from fossil fuels.
• The president of the Seychelles, Wavel Ramkalawan, for whom finance was the highest priority. The island-nation president pointed to the nation’s need for concessional funds to fight climate change, stating that many developing nations are already heavily indebted and cannot support further high-interest loans. In a world-first deal in 2018, the Seychelles swapped some debt in return for establishing huge ocean protection parks.
• UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, who on Monday launched a global Forests and Climate Leaders Partnership aimed at boosting implementation of a previous commitment made at last year’s COP to reverse deforestation by 2030. The event began with a film about the importance of trees narrated by David Attenborough and with clips of King Charles II and US President Joe Biden.
• William Ruto, president of Kenya and chair of the Africa group of nations at COP27, who described the impact of the climate crisis on Africa as a “living nightmare”, particularly the drought in the horn of Africa, but said that Africa, if given the right financial support could engage in a green energy and sustainable farming transition and plant trees.
• Taneti Maamau, president of Kiribati, a low-lying island state described how the nation this year declared a state of emergency due to severe lack of fresh water, as ocean waves washed over their land.

Quotes from the day

“I deeply believe that COP27 is an opportunity to showcase unity against an existential threat that we can only overcome through concerted action and effective implementation.” Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

“We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.” UN Secretary General António Guterres