Watch: The key issues to watch at COP 27

“The context for this COP 27 is super challenging,” according to Moazzam Malik, managing director for global delivery at the World Resources Institute. Speaking at a Devex Pro Live on Nov. 6 before the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 27, kicked off in Sharm el-Sheikh, he pointed to multiple pressures piling up on international institutions, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and its impact on energy supplies, and a vulnerable global economy. “But the need for progress is huge,” he added. Tasneem Essop, executive director of the Climate Action Network International, noted that the summit also comes amid devastating floods in Pakistan and severe drought in the Horn of Africa, with millions of people at risk of starvation, underscoring the urgent need for progress. Can the dial be moved by talks in Egypt? Here are the key issues Essop and Malik said they’d be following. Climate finance Money, of course, will be at the center of the discussions, and there are “expectations on finance in multiple dimensions,” said Malik, who until recently was a senior official in the British Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. “Countries are reeling from the cumulative impact of these different crises,” Essop said, a veteran climate activist who led the World Wildlife Fund’s delegation at the Paris climate summit, not least the devastating impacts of climate change being felt mainly in the global south. That is happening in the context of “an increasing debt burden. There’s just not enough fiscal space domestically for countries, especially developing countries, to cope with all of these crises, and many of the developing countries are having to take out loans to address the impacts of climate change,” which leads them further into a cycle of debt, she said. “The outcomes [of COP27] have to speak to those realities.” Earlier promises on climate finance that have not been met must be addressed, Essop said. Both speakers pointed to the “famous $100 billion” and pledges to double adaptation finance. In 2009, high-income countries promised they would deliver $100 billion of climate finance annually by 2020 for low- and middle-income countries. But that goal is yet to be met — according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the total finance mobilized in 2020 stood at $83.3 billion. Financing for adaptation, rather than mitigation, is lagging particularly far behind. Loss and damage Within climate finance, “loss and damage” — the idea that there should be a mechanism to compensate climate-vulnerable countries for climate change-induced loss and damages — is set once again to be the most contentious issue. In Glasgow last year, Essop said, the Group of 77 plus China, which is “the largest negotiating block representing developing countries in this process, they put forward a resolution for the establishment of a loss and damage finance facility. It got rejected by rich nations.” But civil society has done “a lot of work this year building off of the Glasgow pressure to try and move things along on this front. So this [loss and damage] will be the big issue at COP 27,” she said. There does seem to be some promising movement on this topic, she added — loss and damage has made it onto the formal agenda at COP 27. What the global south hopes to secure now is “an agreement on a finance facility” — at least the beginnings of talks on what exactly such a mechanism will look like. Nationally determined contributions The NDC Synthesis Report, which assesses the nationally determined contributions submitted by all countries, suggests that current commitments will lead to a global temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, compared to the 1.5-degree target. At COP 26, “we also agreed that countries would submit updated and refreshed and more ambitious NDCs. And a few countries have come through with that” but the overall plans still fall far short of what is needed, Malik said. Fossil fuels Essop was outspoken on the issue of fossil fuels. “Rich nations yet again made a commitment to end investment in the expansion of fossil fuels. And what have we witnessed this year? We’re witnessing backpedaling,” she said, with the U.K. issuing new oil and gas licenses and European nations engaging in a “dash for gas” in Africa. Civil society would like to see plans to phase out fossil fuel explicitly included in NDCs, she said. Polarization With so much frustration from civil society and the global south at what is seen as a litany of broken promises from rich countries in the past, “the risk of this COP 27 is that we end up with a very polarized debate, and really are unable to rebuild the trust … and that we lose opportunities for constructive progress,” Malik said. Essop noted that there has always been polarization, but that it was exacerbated this year by broken promises and by a sense that high-income countries had abandoned the global south during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lower-income countries will need to see action, with high-income nations fulfilling their previous commitments, “as a basic way to get back to the levels of trust required for absolute critical collaboration,” she said. Both speakers suggested that progress on loss and damage could serve as the litmus test on how far trust could be rebuilt. Stream the full event recording below for more details on what to watch as these negotiations play out over the next two weeks.