The “Conference of the Parties,” known as “COP“, is an annual gathering of the nations that have ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC“), the Kyoto Protocol, or the Paris Agreement. This year’s COP 27 is taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and marks seven years since the Paris Agreement adoption at COP 21 and thirty years since UNFFCCC was adopted. The theme of this year’s COP is ‘Together for implementation ‘.
COP 27 kicked off on November 8, 2022, and participants are ministers, world leaders and negotiators deciding how to combat climate change and all its effects collectively. Moreover, to add broader viewpoints and transparency to the COP meeting, media corporations, international organizations, and civil society organizations “observe” the proceedings.
Expectations from COP 27
Firstly, it is essential to note that this year’s COP is taking place amidst a geopolitical and energy crisis which may aggravate the collaboration of the nations during the COP. Against this backdrop, hopes are still high that COP 27 will be instrumental in securing resources and scaling up ambitions to reach Paris Agreement goals.
COP 26, which took place in Scotland and Italy in 2021, called for countries to set targets for limiting global warming within one year. It was insufficient to test the Paris ratchet mechanism for increasing mitigation ambition by nationally determined contributions (“NDC“). Therefore, it is expected that COP 27 will continue testing the efficiency of the Paris ratchet mechanism.
It is safe to say that this will be one of the most dynamic COPs as it began with an agreement between the countries to discuss compensation arrangements for irreparable climate damages. This meeting is the first time in history that the nations are discussing this topic.
In addition, figures show that greenhouse gas emissions kept rising as many nations sacrificed reaching their NDCs due to the geopolitical situation, taking us a step backward. COP 27 must face and find a way to fight climate change to achieve all the goals by 2030.
As we showed, there is a lot that we can expect until November 18, 2022 when COP 27 summit ends, and if you are curious to find out all the details about it, stay tuned as we will publish a detailed overview of this year’s summit on our website.
Authors: Milica Novaković, Vasilije Bošković
