Evaluating COP27: from Africa's perspective

 COP27 was held and finished several weeks ago 'successfully'. COP27's primary focus is on climate justice. This means that developing countries, which account for the most negligible historical carbon emission, have unfairly suffered more from the global climate crisis. However, many scholars and critics have seen this conference as a 'failure' for many reasons. I agree with the critics and argue that Africa needs more practical help from COP27, which it failed to accomplish this time.



Five Tensions That Could Derail the COP27 Climate Summit - Scientific American

                                                                    Figure 1: a picture of COP27. (Source)


As the window of opportunity to meet our goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C or lower rapidly closes, COP 27 does too little on the most critical mitigation issue of all - reducing emissions.


Climate justice as the main focus has been mentioned, but not practically engaged by main carbon emitters. Although developing countries have successfully raised and member states have agreed to have funding as compensation for countries like Pakistan, COP27 failed to materialise this funding. This funding issue is left to the next conference. Governments should have agreed on who should pay, who should control the fund and how to deliver. Previous data show less than 10% of international climate funds reached the local level in 2019. COP27 needed to have developed a better way to distribute the compensation to African countries or even a better way of distributing existing funds to local communities. 

 

Similarly, from a carbon emission perspective, COP27 also failed to go beyond the 2021 Glasgow climate pact's promise to "phase down unabated coal power", and further negotiations will be taking place next year. Hence, COP27 needed to distribute more support for African countries regarding food and water from Africa's perspective. However, it is still raising global awareness in climate justice and forming a fund for losses and damages is a significant outcome of COP27, even though details have still to be worked out. Overall, COP27 failed in the way of being practical, and my next blog will focus on Africa's community water management.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction: embrace and understand the complexity of water and food in Africa

Image
From my previous studies and human ecology course learnt in year one, water and food scarcity are always constant threats facing mankind. Africa is usually recognised as a vulnerable continent that constantly faces water and food crises. The situation in 2022 has worsened economically, politically and environmentally.   To understand the current situation, potential challenges, and further discussions about individual countries, it is helpful for the readers to know my viewpoint on this complicated issue. Since lack of food and water is an obvious 'tag' on Africa, my introduction post will briefly clarify the typical stereotypes of African studies and help readers to better understand my future blogs. I will try to avoid the inequalities within my writing and be objective in writing about Africa. Understand the complexity of 'Africa.' A typical picture of Africa: big and red sunset, wild empty savanna. Source Before going into details about water and food in Africa, the
Read more

Climate Justice of Africa: Cop 27 and beyond

Image
COP 27 stands for the 2022  United Nations Climate Change Conference , the 27th United nation Climate Change conference held from 6th November until 18 November 2022. It will be held in an Egyptian coastal city Sharm el-Sheikh. All major stakeholders, including heads of state, ministers, climate activities and more, are gathering for the largest annual climate action meeting. This post was written before the conference took place and argues that the decision-makers should prioritise climate justice. The focus will be the disproportionate impact received by Africa, how it influences food security and why climate justice should be prioritised. First of all, Africa, as well as the globe, is facing a severe climate crisis. Climate change hazards to agricultural productivity, food security, water resources, and ecosystem services may significantly affect African lives and chances for sustainable developmen t. In 2007, the IPCC anticipated that climate change and variability would dramatica
Read more

Water Scarcity of Africa: current situation

Image
Water scarcity refers to the situation of lacking access to safe drinking water. UN's sustainable development goal (SDG) 6 has shown that access the affordable, clean and safe drinking water is a  fundamental human right . The growing lack of water can be shown in two ways, economic and physical water scarcity.  Economic water scarcity  refers to the institutional failings that prevent people from accessing safe water, such as poor infrastructure and lack of planning from a politically unstable government.  Physical water scarcity  literally means the lack of water supply which may result from seasonality and climate change. Unfortunately, Africa is struggling with both types of water scarcity due to many factors such as government failure, climate change and especially  the rapid population growth  with a rate above 2% annually. Water scarcity is predicted to reach a dangerously high level by 2025. By now,  1 in 3 Africans is facing water scarcity . In sub-Saharan Africa,  400 mil
Read more