Countries should prioritise delivering on existing plans to cut carbon emissions rather than drawing up fresh strategies to achieve the 1.5°C temperature goal, according to one of Egypt’s leading climate diplomats.
The COP27 summit will be a “reality check” to make sure that climate pledges already made on UN stages are being delivered in nations around the world, according to Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s chief climate negotiator.
At last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, UK, countries pledged to put forward bolder carbon-cutting plans – so-called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs – within a year. At the time, this was seen as a vital collective promise that would fulfil the summit’s aim of keeping the 1.5°C temperature goal alive.
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Yet, under the leadership of Egypt, the COP27 conference isn’t set to be a crunch moment for nations to deliver on that promise. Rather than conjuring up “nice numbers that make headlines”, Egypt will instead focus on generating the financial and technical support that vulnerable countries need to start cutting emissions immediately, says Nasr.
“What we are hearing from people who are impacted on the ground is ‘enough planning and planning and coming back with new initiatives and development plans’… How much of it is happening on the ground? This is a reality check,” he says.
“We can have too many plans,” says Nasr. “But if we do not deliver on them, then we are not really serious about dealing with climate change.”
The focus on implementation is a subtle shift away from the priorities of the UK’s COP presidency, which ends on 6 November as COP27 gets started. Under the leadership of COP26 president Alok Sharma, the UK was laser-focused on urging countries to move faster on cutting emissions and to adopt longer-term net-zero targets.
For Egypt, financial support for more vulnerable nations is a priority. High-income countries are still yet to fulfil a long-overdue commitment to channel $100 billion a year of climate finance to less wealthy nations. The deadline was 2020, but the latest estimates suggest the pledge won’t be met until next year at the earliest. More support to help countries adapt to the escalating impacts of climate change has also been promised, but not yet delivered.
“Yes, let’s push for enhanced NDCs, but how can developing countries enhance their NDC when they are not seeing funding even for their original NDC? This is something that we are hearing loud and clear,” says Nasr. “We need to deliver on the finance score.”
He admits that the consensus-based UN climate process is a “fragile regime”, particularly in the wake of the turmoil of the past year, which has seen spiralling global inflation, an energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions between the US and China.
In that context, convincing world leaders to turn up in Sharm El Sheikh would be a victory of sorts, says Nasr. “Success on the ground, at this very difficult time, is having a substantial number of heads of states coming and confirming that climate change is still their priority.”
It is a barbed remark perhaps aimed at UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, who provoked international criticism by announcing that he won’t be attending the summit. King Charles also won’t attend the conference, on the advice of the government. Nasr says there is still an “open invitation” to both men to join the event.
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