COP27 is yet another chance to make up for missed opportunities and broken promises

The Conference of the Parties (COPs) takes place under the banner of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its return to the continent after 10 years (COP17 was held in Durban in 2011) is significant. It’s the moment for Africa’s priorities and needs to be foregrounded even in a year in which the war in Ukraine dominates and the grip of a global energy crisis sets in, threatening to reverse gains made for ending fossil fuel dependence. 

COP27 also comes against the backdrop of another year of frequent extreme weather events around the world. In South Africa’s own backyard, there’s been the devastation of the Durban floods in April. For Kenya and much of the East African region, they face the worst droughts in a generation, with no rains for respite, and in Egypt, heatwaves and dust storms are intensifying as average temperatures creep upwards. 

But since the early 1990s, COPs have edged forward with mixed success. Even with some significant agreements, there has also been watered-down language as loopholes for accountability and financing from developed nations and outright missed targets and refusals of big polluting countries to ratify agreements. 

The journey to Sharm el-Sheikh this year has its origins in the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted and 197 countries signed a treaty, agreeing to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.

Two years later, in 1994, the first COP got under way, putting on the Paris negotiating table commitments that 2015 was the target to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, and to have the mechanisms in place for climate action financing.



But in 2022 the planet is already at about 1.1°C warmer, and according to the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) report released in October, the world is off-track. 

The Emissions Gap Report calls for rapid transformation, noting that “the international community is falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place”.

More data from the UN says national pledges since COP26 in 2021 in Glasgow show that policies currently in place point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century.

At COP15, which took place in Copenhagen in 2009, developed nations pledged to scale up new and additional climate finance to reach $100-billion by 2020. The money has not been forthcoming.

But this October, Oxfam, through its tracking of financing for climate change — including the “Climate Finance Shadow Report” — responded to the finance progress report compiled by Canada and Germany on behalf of donor countries: “While this report provides helpful information on various actions to advance the climate finance agenda, it fails to boost confidence that developed countries will make significant and swift progress on meeting their commitment to provide $100-billion annually, over 2020-2025.

Robust road map lacking