Ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) slated for November 2022, the Bonn Climate Change Conference will start today against a backdrop of accelerating climate impacts and geopolitical tension.
The COP27 conference which will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, is expected to build on the positive outcome of last year’s conference – COP26 in Glasgow, which finalised operational details of the Paris Agreement as well as identified work in the key areas of mitigation, adaptation, support – particularly finance – and loss and damage.
During the conference, non-party stakeholders will be able to provide input to the several streams of work which were launched in Glasgow.
Recall that the main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global average temperature rise this century well below two Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
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In her reaction, ahead of the conference, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, Patricia Espinosa, said that various governments must not be deterred in the fight against climate change.
“Climate change is not an agenda we can afford to push back on our global schedule. We need decisions and actions now and it is incumbent on all nations to make progress in Bonn,” she was quoted as saying.
Espinosa explained that to implement the commitments made to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement, the world has a significant workload ahead, but also a great deal to build on.
She said that the ambition must urgently be raised to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and immediate action is needed, adding that currently, the world is on track to more than double the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement by the end of the century.
“COP27 in Egypt needs to focus on Implementation. There, nations must show how they will, through legislation, policies and programmes and throughout all jurisdictions and sectors, begin putting the Paris Agreement to work in their home countries,” the UN’s top climate change official said.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
