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Charlotte

COP27: Why is it Relevant to You and Your Organisation?


It has been a year since COP26 took place in Glasgow and the United Kingdom has handed its presidency over to Egypt for the 27th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) currently underway in Sharm El-Sheikh.


In the UK, the lead up to the event was overshadowed by media speculation on whether King Charles was told that he could not attend the Conference by ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss; whether the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would attend and the fact that Greta Thunberg chose not to attend, but what is COP27 and why should you be interested?


Over the next fortnight, world leaders and negotiators from over 190 countries are meeting once again, 30 years after the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to discuss the actions that all countries urgently need to take to address climate change and its impacts.


The key aims of COP27 include:


Mitigation:

To unite to limit warming to well below 2°C and work hard to keep the 1.5°C target alive.


Adaptation:

To place adaptation at the forefront of global action. The urgency of adapting to a changing climate and building resilience is becoming ever more apparent.


Finance:

To make significant progress on the issue of climate finance. Many of the countries facing the most severe impacts of climate change are those that have contributed the least to global emissions. Loss and Damage discussions about whether richer nations should pay compensation to vulnerable countries to provide support in light of unavoidable climate disasters will again be high on the agenda.


Collaboration:

To turn the Glasgow COP26 outcomes into actions.



In an address to global leaders on the first day of the Conference, António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, issued a clear warning that progress to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions has been too slow and that “we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” Governments and businesses around the world need to work together as “our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible."[1]



The World Meteorological Organisation (MRO) has warned that the last 8 years are set to be the eight hottest years on record. The impacts of climate change are evident, not only with the change in global average temperatures, but with an ever increasing frequency of extreme weather events around the world. During 2022 alone, there has been devastating flooding in Pakistan leaving a third of the country underwater; wildfires across Europe; record-breaking heatwaves and hurricanes in the USA and Latin America; a typhoon in Japan; extreme flooding in Australia; serious storms and droughts across Africa and catastrophic heatwaves across China and India. And rising sea levels remain an existential threat low lying countries.



The message could not be any clearer and is becoming harder to ignore, the window of time to act is closing, we must take urgent and decisive action to reduce our Greenhouse Gas emissions now.


The antidote to climate anxiety is always climate action.


We know that you want to be part of the solution but you may not know where to begin.

Now is not the time to delay. Get in touch today to schedule an informal chat about the business benefits of measuring, managing and reducing your Greenhouse Gas Emissions and how Simply Carbon Reduction can help you to move to a more environmentally sustainable business model and start making a difference today.



[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines tipping points as “critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded, can lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an understanding that the change is irreversible.”

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