Ever since the first Conference of Parties (COP) was initiated in Berlin in 1995, COPs have been used to review what the signatory Parties (the countries who have signed up) have achieved, and measure their progress. These annual conferences organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are the sites for negotiations, discussions, and abating challenges.
Global Crises Impact COP 27
This year (2022) COP 27 in Egypt takes place amidst the backdrop of a multitude of global crises (Cogswell, et al. 2022). We could expect this COP to be an active heated discussion ground that might witness renewed discussion on the pledges made at 2021’s climate conference which had recognized the interlinked global crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss.
The ripple effects of COVID – 19 had not subsided completely when the Ukraine war roared on the horizon which has caused double impact on already impoverished economies. Food, fuel and overall energy prices have skyrocketed, thanks to profiteering of the crisis by the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), mainly Saudi Arabia (Bland 2022). A climate catastrophe in Pakistan claimed more than 1000 lives and displaced millions (Chaudhary 2022).
The first half of 2022 also saw floods and storms in southern Africa that disrupted economic activity and claimed hundreds of lives. China was similarly battered by a drought that derailed the nation’s food and energy production, and Europe is bracing itself for a cold winter after facing the onslaught of the worst drought in 500 years (BBC 2022). Crises does not differentiate between developed, developing or least developed countries. However, the impacts of natural and/or man-made crises is compounded by existing economic disparity, a weak public safety net and deteriorating food systems.
The Parties Must Come Together
It is thus required from this year’s climate conference that Parties come together to navigate such crises. It is high time that we recognize how our ecosystems have become fragile due to burgeoning unsustainable economic activities. This conference should also be used by the Parties and their delegates to recognize that adaptation, mitigation and GHG reduction strategies now have to extend beyond climate specific activities and be more inclusive of the nexus with food, income, gender, and living.
Millions of people have now been pushed back to poverty for the first time ever. As the current UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres remarked recently, “the world has moved backwards. COVID – 19 and the war has set back more than four years of hard – won progress. Income inequalities have widened as more people fall back into extreme poverty, job losses, along with increasing food and energy prices has set the cycle in backward motion” (Xinhua 2022).
Why I Am in Egypt at COP 27
The intention to participate in the conference was to advocate on my part for the local voices that can speak to adaption strategies, in the context of the National Adaptation Plans (NAP), that are to be finalized by the Parties (UNFCCC 2021). The NAPs were established under the Cancun Adaptation Framework (CAF) which enables Parties to formulate and implement national adaptation strategies as means of identify medium- and long-term adaptation needs. It is a continuous, progressive and iterative process. Through the participation in the Capacity Building Hub organized by the Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB), our objective is to inform climate policy making through local knowledge that has been the wealth of indigenous and other local communities for centuries and how their practices have helped in harboring a sustainable relationship between humans and the ecosystem.
This post was written by Aritra Chakrabarty, who is attending COP 27 as part of a delegation led by Sarah Green and the Youth Environmental Alliance in Higher Education (YEAH) Network. YEAH is a transdisciplinary, multi-institutional network that equips students with real-world experience of collaborative, evidence-based approaches to global environmental sustainability. Aritra is among more than 35,000 attendees at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27). The annual summit is the largest climate-change-focused event in the world. He is an Environmental & Energy Policy graduate student at Michigan Technological University.