COP27: Maintaining momentum
The 2022 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference—the COP27 Summit—in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt that officially started this week risks becoming one of the casualties of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis.
Inflation is biting and governments are under pressure to subsidize household energy bills to ease the pain. Gazprom’s decision to stop and dramatically reduce gas supplies has prompted some States mainly in Europe to consider increasing oil and gas extraction both from their own domestic reserves and by investing in projects and pipelines in other countries.
Hosting the proceedings, Egyptian President Abdel Fatteh al Sisi is determined to make the first UN Climate Summit in Africa a success. That means no backtracking on earlier commitments on carbon emissions – despite the uncertain geopolitical landscape and deepening energy crisis.
Aside from the environmental and climate damage that would be caused by abandoning emissions reduction targets, a return to oil and gas does not have significant public support.
Despite some governments appearing to waiver on their commitments to curb emissions and make a transition to renewable energies, public opinion suggests that green policies are seen as a vital part of the solution to the current crisis.
Opinion polling in Europe has found that a large majority of voters view increased use of renewable energy as vital to long-term energy security and do not want their leaders to delay their commitments on carbon emissions and renewables.
A YouGov poll of 7,000 people in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Poland for example, has found that nearly two-thirds of people across all countries attribute some of the blame for the current rise in their energy bills on their government’s slowness to invest in renewable energy.
Besides, high-income countries can hardly expect developing countries in Africa and Asia to forgo the use or export of their own natural resources without more investment in renewable energy and climate change adaption and mitigation projects. That requires finally making good on the financing targets set in 2009 by high-income countries to mobilize US$100 billion by 2020 and an estimated US$70 billion a year to meet their renewable energy needs.
Any concerted move by wealthy countries to increase fossil fuel production will inevitably lead to developing countries following suit.
We are already seeing a backlash.
A paper by the African Union calling for a common position recommends an ‘increase in Africa oil production ... refining of African oil in African refineries, and pan-African storage and distribution infrastructure’; [and an ]acceleration of ‘regional gas and electricity projects’.
The paper also includes a reference to the ‘opportunities for the export of natural gas to other markets,’ and a nod to the scramble by European and other nations to replace Russian gas with alternative sources—a move which many African states view as an opportunity to increase oil and gas exploration in their own countries.
According to Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, the focus of COP27 will be “to raise ambition.”
As such, States will be required to move ahead with more curbs on carbon emissions, to reach tougher agreements on adaptation and climate finance, and to make a dedicated effort against rowing back on a decade of slow but genuine progress.