CAIRO —
US climate envoy
John Kerry said Wednesday he hoped the COP27 climate
conference would provide energy “to change the world”, as he and officials from
24 African nations held a preparatory meeting in Egypt.
اضافة اعلان
The three-day forum comes after African leaders
lashed out at industrialized nations for failing to show up at a summit this
week in the Dutch city of Rotterdam dedicated to helping African nations adapt
to climate impacts.
The African continent emits only around three
percent of global CO2 emissions, former UN chief Ban Ki-moon noted this week,
yet African nations are among those most exposed to climate impacts, notably
worsening droughts and floods.
“Sharm El-Sheikh can provide the energy we need to
change the world,” Kerry said, referring to the Egyptian resort town which will
host the crucial November climate conference.
But he also warned that the world was “in trouble”,
calling climate change “irreversible”.
“It costs more not to respond to climate change than
to respond,” Kerry said.
This week’s forum
in Egypt aims to “leverage African leaders’ voices to mobilize greater
international support for a green and resilient recovery in Africa”, according
to the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
It also seeks to drum up funding to help vulnerable
countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Alongside the US envoy, UN Deputy Secretary General
Amina Mohammed, international organizations, NGOs, and private companies are
attending the regional meeting in the New Administrative Capital 50km east of
Cairo.
‘Help other countries’
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said “$800 billion a year is needed to mitigate climate change
from now until 2050.”
“African countries, including Egypt, emit the least
but are the most affected by climate change,” he told the forum, calling on the
international community to “support developing countries and the African
continent” as they face climate challenges.
Funding to help poorer countries curb their
emissions and strengthen their resilience will be a key flashpoint at
COP27, as
a long-standing goal to spend $100 billion a year from 2020 on helping
vulnerable nations adapt to climate change remains unmet.
“Twenty countries are 80 percent of the problem,”
said Kerry, whose country along with China are the world’s two largest
emitters.
Those nations “need to help other countries to be
able to make the transition too”, he said.
A summit Monday in Rotterdam was the first to focus
on helping Africa adapt to climate change fallout, bringing together the
African Union and the International Monetary Fund.
But AU chief and Senegalese President
Macky Sall noted with “a touch of bitterness the absence of the leaders of the industrialized
world” at that summit, which aimed to raise $250 million in capital.
According to the African Development Bank, the
continent will need as much as $1.6 trillion between 2020 and 2030 for its own
efforts to limit climate change and to adapt to the adverse impacts that are
already apparent.
“No government in the world has enough money to
pay,” Kerry said, urging a “pathway” for the private sector to produce revenue
to help “finance the transition and address climate change”.
‘Hanging by a thread’
Also Wednesday, more than
400 aid agencies and activist groups called for the issue of loss and damage
finance to be on the formal agenda of COP27.
Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at
Climate Action Network International, said COP27’s credibility was “hanging by
a thread”.
“The COP27 conference will be counted as a failure
if developed nations continue to ignore the demand from developing countries to
establish a loss and damage finance facility to help people recover from
worsening floods, wildfires and rising seas,” he said.
Egypt’s north coast is under threat from rising sea
levels, and it has seen its
Red Sea corals begin to die as temperatures rise.
The Arab world’s most populous country, with 103
million people, has made solar power a priority in its ambitious quest to
source 42 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2035.
Its Benban Solar Park is one of the largest such
facilities in the world.
But rights groups have said Egypt’s hosting of COP27
“rewards” Sisi’s “repressive rule”.
The UN’s annual Conference of the Parties involves
nearly 200 countries, with hundreds of observers, NGOs and — very often — mass
demonstrations designed to ramp up the pressure on political leaders.
An Egyptian official told AFP in June that such
gatherings would be allowed around the conference in Egypt, which has outlawed
demonstrations, although protesters would need to inform and “coordinate with
authorities in advance”.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
