30 C
Guwahati
Friday, March 29, 2024

COP27’s Historic Decisions

The outcome of COP27 makes history in agreeing on setting up a loss and damage fund to help the developing countries but failed to agree on greater actions to successfully deal with the rising temperature of the Earth, which the Paris Agreement of 2015 has set to limit to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The world finally settled on a very weak agreement on preventing the climate crisis

- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -

The outcome of COP27 makes history in agreeing on setting up a loss and damage fund to help the developing countries but failed to agree on greater actions to successfully deal with the rising temperature of the Earth, which the Paris Agreement of 2015 has set to limit to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The world finally settled on a very weak agreement on preventing the climate crisis. Achieving an agreement to set up a loss and damage fund is just the beginning. G77 plus China has said, “We hope that when the fund becomes operational, it can reflect the level of urgency and the needs of developing countries. A big responsibility is now in the hands of the committee that will design the fund.” After very tense negotiation rounds that ran over the Friday deadline and went through the night, the participating countries finally agreed to set up a fund to help poor developing countries being battered by climate disasters. The final draft text of the overall agreement was released early on Sunday and a session approved the text’s provision to set up a ‘loss and damage’ fund.

It was a historic victory for the developed and poor countries that have been suffering a range of climate disasters in the sense that they have been demanding for such a fund for the last 30 years since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992. However, the deal signed by the parties has delayed approving a wider deal to outline the global resolve and action that could be binding on all countries so that the world can successfully fight the climate crisis from the rising temperature of the Earth. The deal has left, rather pushed out from the deal, many of the most controversial decisions even on the fund into the next year. Countries have decided on a ‘transitional committee’ that would go into the issues and finally make recommendations for countries, which would be put at the COP28 climate summit in November 2023 for adoption.

- Advertisement -

However, over-emphasising and celebrating the victory by telling the world as Mohamed Adow, director of energy and climate at the thinktank Power Shift Africa, has said that COP27 had done what no other COP has achieved, should be interpreted cautiously, since the agreement has delayed the binding agreement to contain the ever-rising greenhouse gas emission that is the real culprit behind the rise in temperature. The bitter conflict between the rich and the poor nations during the negotiation rounds has sufficiently indicated that the rich countries were big in commitment but doing only a little. At one time, even the Secretary General of the United Nations had said that there were efforts of ‘greenwashing’ and countries are doing less than they have committed in COP26 in Glasgow, which meant the world was not on track to achieve net zero by 2050. The second and the third largest emitters China and India had officially declared to achieve net zero by 2060 and 2070. COP27 final agreement thus has achieved only a little, and the world needs to do much more to avoid catastrophic climate change shortly.

- Advertisement -
The Hills Times
The Hills Timeshttps://www.thehillstimes.in/
The Hills Times, a largely circulated English daily published from Diphu and printed in Guwahati, having vast readership in hills districts of Assam, and neighbouring Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur.
Latest news
- Advertisement -
Related news
- Advertisement -