The Outcomes of the 2022 UN Climate Conference - Is it all a COP Out?
Written by Wildlife & Welfare Researcher Charlotte Stadden
In November 2022, we saw the 27th annual Conference of the Parties (COP27) take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where governing officials, representatives and industry players from across the globe met to address the critical state of our planet. Their aim each year is to come to an agreement on how to prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels) by the end of the century as well as how to mitigate against the climate change impacts that we are already seeing today.
Despite the importance of the COP meetings, the outcomes are often criticised for being vague and unambitious and the agreements aren’t legally binding so countries following through on their claims are doing so voluntarily. With that said, there are of course many positive decisions to come out of the COP meetings including some potential climate-saving agreements.
The Positive Outcomes of COP27:
1) Establishment of the Loss and Damages Fund:
This agreement was a major breakthrough, with many calling it the highlight of the conference. The fund's aim is to provide financial support to those nations most impacted by the effects of climate change and it was the result of many years of campaigning from some of the most vulnerable countries.
Some of the climate consequences that the fund will be used for includes the destruction caused by rising sea levels, ocean acidification, extreme weather events such as bushfires, crop failures and unusually long heatwaves, all events that are happening more and more frequently.
It is particularly significant as many of the countries on the frontline of climate change, are some of the poorest and have also contributed the least to the climate crisis, such as Pakistan who recently had US$30 billion in flood damages but emits less than 1% of global emissions, while the G20 countries represent around 75% of global greenhouse emissions.
2) Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation Initiative (FAST)
Agriculture and food systems are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change due to a mixture of droughts, increased temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, floods and other extreme weather events. This vulnerability in our food systems increases the risk of hunger in our most vulnerable populations. The FAST initiative’s aim is to improve the quality and quantity of climate financial contributions to transform the agriculture and food industries by 2030 and therefore decrease the risk of hunger and malnutrition around the world.
Some of the guiding principles of the initiative include:
Empowering and engaging women, youth and indigenous people as well as people in vulnerable situations.
Ensuring the best available science and innovation are considered, including local practices.
Promoting peer-to-peer exchanges.
Ensuring wide and balanced stakeholder engagement including scientific, financial and civil partners.
Coordinating and collaborating with ongoing regional initiatives to maximize synergies.
Disappointing Outcomes of COP27:
1) No Agreement Made on the Phasing Out of Fossil Fuels:
Fossil fuel use is one of the major factors that will impede upon efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Despite 80 countries supporting the phase-out of fossil fuels, no decisions were made on how and when this will happen, with oil and gas companies still thought to receive US$64 billion in government subsidies per year.
This target of capping the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees was initially agreed upon in the Paris Agreement in 2015 (COP21) after climate representatives, who had been urging governing officials since 2010 (COP16) of the potentially irreversible threat to both the planet and humanity should this temperature be exceeded, finally got their voices heard. This was a landmark agreement and led to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) providing a special report on the impacts of global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius which you can read here.
2) Mitigation Work Programme (MWP)
The MWP was created in Glasgow at COP26 with the aim to urgently scale up mitigation implementation. During COP27 delegates were meant to define the goals of the programme, including a timeframe for this mitigation to take place. Although some factors were determined, such as that the programme will run until at least 2026 and focus on all sectors, overall, very little progress was made, and it was decided that the process will not be able to establish new goals to reduce emissions.
All in all, it remains very vague and non-descriptive. This programme is an essential step in mitigating climate change and for it to be successful there need to be major improvements seen!
3) The Lack of Sustainability at the Meeting Itself:
This is a recurring theme for UN Climate Change Conferences with delegates and ministers arriving from all over the world in private jets and then shuttled around in large cars. This year however it wasn’t just the transport that caused the meeting to be unsustainable. The venue itself was built specifically to host the global meeting in the middle of the desert and included the installation of 150 brand-new air-conditioning units that use extremely harmful hydrofluorocarbon (HFC), despite more sustainable options being available. Not only that, but large amounts of single-use plastic were used, and the main sponsor of the event was Coca-Cola, one of the biggest plastic polluters in the world! Not exactly the environmentally friendly image you would imagine!
Take Away
At the end of the day, any action taken is better than no action when it comes to slowing the rising temperature of our planet. But is it all too little too late? We must hope that COP28, which is to be held in the United Arab Emirates in November 2023, will end with more decisive and ambitious results that we urgently need in order to halt climate change and protect our planet.
You can read more about the decisions made in Sharm el-Sheik at COP27 here
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