Skip to main content

COP27: Looking For Positives.

Managing the effects of climate change on the hydrological cycle has come up a few times in this blog and we’ve discussed both community-led, grassroots initiatives as well as transnational management schemes. One of the largest global discussions of climate change and policy is COP which held its 27th meeting (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in November of this year. There were hopes that the decision to hold the meeting in Africa would indicate a discussion focused on the climate injustice faced by African nations and other low-income countries, who are generally the least responsible for climate change but experience its largest impacts.

UCL professors and lecturers Richard Taylor, Mark Maslin, Priti Parikh and Simon Chin-Yee were in attendance at COP27 and wrote this article which describes COP27 as a failure and is more than worth a read for a broader explanation of the shortcomings at this COP.

Though I agree majorly with the article and believe the discussions at COP27 largely did not progress past COP26, there was one key development: The Loss and Damage fund that was blocked in Glasgow last year by the US, EU and UK was approved at the last minute. This fund would provide financial aid, especially for developing countries, to support losses created by climate change-driven events, such as floods, droughts, and other disasters. While the approval of this fund is a small win for climate justice, the framework has not yet been created for who is responsible for funding the scheme and who its recipients will be. Though to many of us it will seem obvious that the US, EU, UK, and other high emitting countries should be contributing money to the fund, their previous blocking of the fund means that their involvement is likely to be contested and could delay the fund’s set-up. Equally, India and China have a further reluctance to contribute to the fund as they are not historic emitters, although China’s total accumulative emissions almost match that of the EU, as seen in the Figure below.

Figure 1: Cumulative CO2 emissions for the four top emitters, showing their historic contributions (The Global Carbon Project). 

Due to this, it’s difficult to call the approval of the fund a success but it is, at least, a step forward. It’s vital that the countries that will most benefit from the Loss and Damage Fund, many African nations included, apply pressure for the proper policy for the fund to be discussed and finalised so reparations for climate injustice can finally begin. 

Comments

  1. Richard taylorDecember 23, 2022 at 12:05 AM

    Thanks for your post. I agree with your argument that the agreement on Loss and Damage is significant. It marked one of the first times at the near-annual COP that there has been sustained solidarity among lower-income countries on a key issue. Indeed, their collective determination pushed the high-income countries (higher GHG emitters) to the very end of the proceedings. Let's hope COP28 will see clear commitments of funding to realise this fund.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shrinking Water Sources: Lake Chad.

Lake Chad is a classic example of the impacts of environmental change on the hydrological system in Africa and therefore an excellent place for us to begin our exploration of this topic. Lake Chad is located in the centre of the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa, spanning areas in Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon.   In the 1960’s it was ranked as the world’s 6 th largest inland water body , covering an area of 25,000 km 2 . By 2004, its area was just 532 km 2 , a reduction of approximately 90%. The scale of the change can be visualised in Figure 1 . The lake has huge economic importance for the area, namely for the fishing industry but also for agriculture and pastoralism. Therefore measuring the changes to the lake and identifying the parameters that influence them is vital to adaptation. Figure 1 - A map of Lake Chad and its surrounding area, showing the character of the lake in 1960 and 2002. The rainfall patterns over the Lake Chad basin have a latitudinal gradient,
3 comments
Read more

Desertification- When The Dry Gets Drier.

In one of my previous posts, I broadly described how climate change will impact Africa’s hydrological cycle by making wet areas wetter and dry areas drier. There are a considerable number of negatives to extreme aridity: drought, degradation of vegetation and overstretching of resources to name three. All three of these impacts can contribute to desertification. Desertification is a specific type of degradation that occurs in dryland areas, extending arid areas beyond their existing boundaries and changing the environment of the landscape. It includes declines in the quality of soil, vegetation, and water resources, all of which can be either temporary or permanent. These declines are drastic for human populations, globally 2.7 billion of whom live in dryland areas . There is a complex relationship between climate change, drought, and desertification , linked by a number of feedback loops and this complexity has often hindered the comprehensive monitoring of desertification proces
1 comment
Read more

Climate Change and the Hydrological Cycle: A Pit-stop Tour.

Climate change is an all too familiar phrase that is often accompanied by a profound, and yet distant, sense of dread. However the effects of climate change are already taking place, and it is widely agreed that Africa is experiencing temperature rises higher than any other continent . It’s important to understand the mechanisms behind climate change to understand it’s effects on the hydrological cycle and, ultimately, the African population. Climate Change. Earth’s climate has been widely variable throughout its history, from the humid ‘super greenhouse’ of the Eocene to a completely frozen planet known as ‘ Snowball Earth ’ . These changes have taken place over timescales that range from thousands to millions of years and have been influenced by numerous factors including the Milankovitch cycles (which describe cyclical variations in the Earth’s orbit) and factors influencing the Earth’s energy budget such as solar variations, volcanic activity and greenhouse gases (GHG’s). The
1 comment
Read more