The climate between the stick of responsibility and the carrot of returns
After many climate sessions and discussions that took place during the period from 6 to 18 November 2022 in the city of peace, “Sharm El-Sheikh”, theClimate Conference packed its bags after the end of its twenty-seventh session, leaving for “Dubai”, which will host the next session of the conference.COP28.To this moment, day after day, the results that emerged from the climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh are still echoing in the various meeting spaces and climate action sessions around the world, as the conference succeeded in achieving a historic achievement, which was the establishment of a fund to compensate for the “losses and damages” incurred. Developing countries as a result of climate change.
We can point to two important turning points in climate action. The first came in 1992 from the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, which hosted theUnited Nations conference onEnvironment and Development, that The summit was ably managed by the late Dr. Mustafa Kamal Tolba, when he assumed the position of Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. The second turning point came at the Paris Summit in 2015 “COP21”.The Rio Summit gave birth to three important international agreements, and these agreements were transformed into approaches to action: the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and the United Nations Climate Change Convention, from which the “Conferences of the Parties - COP” series emerged.On the other hand, the importance of the Paris Conference lies in the “Paris Climate Agreement”, and the agreement aims to limit the phenomenon of global warming to “1.5 degrees Celsius” and to a limit of less than two degrees, in addition to the commitment to provide aid amounting to “one hundred billion” US dollars to countries. developing countries to confront and adapt to climate change, but the global interaction with this agreement since then does not bode well for any real progress towards fulfilling the pledges made.
Challenges of organizing the COP27 climate conference
In response to a kind invitation from the Canadian-Egyptian Business Council in Cairo, I attended a symposium in which Mrs. Yasmine Fouad, Minister of the Environment, spoke about the climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, and in her speech she spoke interestingly about the behind-the-scenes preparations for organizing this global summit.WhileCoronavirus gave the Glasgow Summit “COP26” two years of preparation, and the UAE guaranteed its hosting of the next conference two years ago as well, Egypt had to complete its preparations within only eleven months, and when I visited the Blue Zone For the climate conference, three days before the start of the activities, the challenge seemed enormous.
The development operations included transforming Sharm El Sheikh into a green city through several axes, including: supplying the conference center, hotels, and many buildings with renewable energy, whether through solar stations installed on the roofs of buildings, as well as three solar energy stations that feed approximately twenty thousand people. A hotel room.More than 200 electric buses were allocated, covering all neighborhoods of the city - passing through the conference headquarters - to serve more than 50,000 participants, in addition to 15 logistical routes to serve VIP visitors and officials and manage all needs.
In addition to the above, eleven initiatives were prepared to be launched during the events, covering the sectors of food, water, energy, finance, sustainable transport, women’s adaptation, and others.The genius of Egyptian policy was to urge developed countries to allocate easy sources of financing to help countries confront their challenges, while opening new markets for development investments and climate action, far from the usual discourse whose content is to deliver... The blame is placed on developed countries, which may push many of them into a corner to take a defensive position rather than a participatory one. Therefore, this balanced call for financing can be described as “the stick of historical responsibility and the carrot of future returns.”From this angle, the success of the Egyptian policy in including the “losses and damages” item in the summit’s decisions was classified as a distinguished success, as the approval of the item means its presence at the negotiating table in the upcoming summits. As for the challenges that the Egyptian policy overcame in order for this item to be included, what The negotiation strategies that were used are for another article.
