Ahead of the next UN climate summit, Egypt has asked countries to set aside tensions and animosity over the Ukraine war for the sake of focusing on the climate crisis.
Egypt is set to host the Cop27 conference which is intended as a forum for companies to fulfil the promises they made at the landmark Cop26 summit in Glasgow last year in Sharm El-Sheikh in November.
But expectations for the meeting have dimmed, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has set nations at loggerheads, while the rocketing energy prices and food prices that have resulted have wrought economic and political damage across the developed and developing world.
The Egyptian government’s special representative for Cop27, Wael Aboulmagd this week, called on nations to concentrate on the pressing nature of the climate crisis and to carry on negotiations despite their differences on other geopolitical issues.
Read also: Religious leaders demand fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty
Aboulmagd, who was Egypt’s ambassador to Brazil and is now assisting Sameh Shoukry, the foreign minister who will act as president of Cop27, also promised that civil society would be represented at the talks.
“Animosity will have a cost,”he said. “We as responsible diplomats ask everyone to rise to the occasion and show leadership by putting our political differences aside and coming together.”
Aboulmagd said that countries must not use the upheavals in geopolitics and in national economies since Cop26 to hide their inaction, adding that climate negotiations are supposed to carry on in their own diplomatic stream.
“Show more ambition,” he said. “I urge everyone not to use this unfolding geopolitical situation as a pretext for backsliding.”
He further explained that rising fossil fuel prices should concentrate minds on finding alternatives, urging everyone to take the right lesson from this: that over-dependence on fossil fuels is problematic, and we need to expedite the transition to renewable energy.
Aboulmagd also pointed out that no country would escape damage from the climate crisis and that all countries agreed at Glasgow on the vital importance of working together to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.
“Set aside the adversarial zero-sum approach. With this most existential threat, we need to act to save lives and livelihoods. There is no time for delays, no pretext for not acting or backtracking,” he noted.
Activists also fear demonstrations will not be allowed and that their participation in the meeting will be limited by the Egyptian government, which has clamped down severely on other protests.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
