COP27 in Egypt | World leaders take the stage

(Sharm el-Sheikh) Political leaders around the world march from Monday to COP27, under pressure to strengthen their climate commitments in the face of runaway warming and provide financial support to poor countries, which suffer the most .

Some 110 heads of state and government are due to speak Monday and Tuesday to delegates gathered in Sharm e-Sheikh for the 27^e UN world climate conference.

Interventions against the background of multiple and linked crises that are shaking the world, invasion of Ukraine, galloping inflation and threat of recession, energy crisis, with recovery or support for fossil fuels, or food, while the world population will cross the bar 8 billion.

A “polycrisis” which risks overshadowing that linked to global warming, the devastating impacts of which have multiplied in 2022 – devastating floods, heat waves, droughts affecting harvests.

Retreat

“All crises are important, but none has as much impact” as global warming, whose devastating effects “will only get worse”, hammered Sunday, during the formal opening of COP27, Simon Stiell , the head of UN-Climate.

However, countries are far from doing what is necessary to fight against global warming.

Greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 45% by 2030 to have a chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era, the most ambitious objective of the agreement of Paris, cornerstone of the fight against global warming.

But the current commitments of the signatory states, even if they were finally respected, would lead to a 5 to 10% increase in emissions, putting the world on a trajectory at best of 2.4°C by the end of the century.

And with current policies, a catastrophic +2.8°C is looming, according to the UN.

A symbol of the “backsliding” that many say they fear, only 29 countries have tabled enhanced reduction plans since the 2021 COP, even though they had adopted a “pact” calling on them to do so.

Any announcements of additional reductions in Sharm el-Sheikh will therefore be closely scrutinized.

Just like those on aid to poor countries and often the most exposed to the effects of global warming, even if they have hardly contributed to it, having minimal greenhouse gas emissions.

In a gesture that many activists hope is more than symbolic, COP27 delegates decided on Sunday to put on the conference’s official agenda for the first time the thorny issue of financing the damage already caused by global warming.

They already amount to tens of billions of dollars — more than 30, for example, for the recent floods which flooded a third of Pakistan — and are expected to increase sharply.

Vulnerable countries are demanding a specific financing mechanism, which the richest are reluctant to do, fearing that their responsibility will be called into question and arguing that the climate financing system is already complex enough without adding an additional layer.

The COP27 will not lead to a decision, the discussions should continue until 2024.

Absent

The summit will take place with two major absentees. Chinese President Xi Jinping will not come to Egypt, and his American counterpart Joe Biden, retained by the midterm elections, will move quickly to the COP on November 11.

Cooperation between the world’s two main emitters of greenhouse gases, whose relations are strained, is nevertheless crucial. MM. Xi and Biden could, however, meet in Bali the following week on the sidelines of the G20.

The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, an ardent supporter of oil production, will on the other hand be present in Sharm el-Sheikh.

As well as the new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who assured that he would also raise in Egypt the case of the British-Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abdel Fattah, on hunger strike and who, according to his family, stopped drinking on Sunday.