COP 27: UN chief calls for pact to tackle climate change

Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, has called for a Climate Solidarity Pact between developed and emerging economies in which all countries make an extra effort to reduce emissions this decade in line with the 1.5-degree goal.

In a speech at the opening session of COP 27 in Egypt on Monday, he called for a pact in which wealthier countries and international financial institutions provide financial and technical assistance to help emerging economies speed up their own renewable energy transition.

“A Pact to end dependence on fossil fuels and the building of coal plants – phasing out coal in OECD countries by 2030 and everywhere else by 2040,” he said.

“A pact that will provide universal, affordable, sustainable energy for all. A Pact in which developed and emerging economies unite around a common strategy and combine capacities and resources for the benefit of humankind.”

He said the United States and China have a responsibility to be part of this pact as the choice before the world appears stark.

He said: “Today, some three-and-a-half billion people live in countries highly vulnerable to climate impacts.

“In Glasgow, developed countries promised to double adaptation support to $40 billion a year by 2025. We need a roadmap on how this will be delivered. And we must recognize that this is only a first step.

Adaptation needs are set to grow to more than $300 billion dollars a year by 2030. Half of all climate finance must flow to adaptation.”

He said international financial institutions and multilateral development banks must change their business model and do their part to scale up adaptation finance and better mobilise private finance to massively invest in climate action.

“Countries and communities must also be able to access it – with finance flowing to identified priorities through efforts like the Adaptation Pipeline Accelerator,” he said.

This year’s COP 27 is bringing together tens of thousands of participants and more than 100 heads of state to discuss efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and ways to cope with a changing climate.

It will run from Nov. 6-18 in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. COP27 aims to build on the Glasgow climate deal created at last year’s summit, as well as 2015’s Paris Agreement, but attendees face a sobering reality.

“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” Guterres said. “We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.”

Reports published in the run-up to COP27 show the world is on course to warm between 2.6 and 2.8°C (5.04°F) by the end of the century unless further emissions cuts are achieved.

Officials have urged countries to commit to plans to further reduce emissions and meet the Paris targets of limiting warming levels to “well below” the 2°C mark, with an aspirational target of 1.5°C.

Scientists have warned that warming beyond 1.5°C would have calamitous consequences, such as the potential disappearance of warm water coral reefs worldwide, flooding, desertification, and other troubles.

At this year’s COP holding on African soil, many developing countries are calling for more attention and financing to be channelled to measures that can help countries cope with the effects of climate change that are already present, such as creating warning systems for worsening extreme weather event.

Read also: Africa must oppose measures at COP 27 that restricts its fossil fuels

Guterres acknowledged that the war in Ukraine, conflict in the Sahel, and violence and unrest in so many other places are terrible crises plaguing today’s world but climate change is on a different timeline and a different scale.

“It is the defining issue of our age. It is the central challenge of our century. It is unacceptable, outrageous, and self-defeating to put it on the back burner. Indeed, many of today’s conflicts are linked to growing climate chaos,” he said.

He said the war in Ukraine has exposed the profound risks of our fossil fuel addiction. “Today’s urgent crises cannot be an excuse for backsliding or greenwashing. If anything, they are a reason for greater urgency, stronger action, and effective accountability.”

The UN chief blamed human activity responsible for climate change and said human action would be the solution.

“The science is clear: any hope of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees means achieving global net zero emissions by 2050. But that 1.5-degree goal is on life support – and the machines are rattling. We are getting dangerously close to the point of no return,” he said.

To avoid that dire fate, he said all G20 countries must accelerate their transition now – in this decade and developed countries must take the lead.