Africa-Press – Botswana. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, warned on Sunday that the “planet is sending a signal of suffering”, in a video message sent to participants at the COP27 Climate Summit in Egypt, which started yesterday.
At the moment when COP27 starts, the planet is sending a signal of suffering”, said Guterres, quoted by the AFP news agency, referring to a “chronic situation of climate chaos”.
The UN climate conference kicked off yesterday, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with a new warning about the acceleration of global warming, whose financing of damage to poor countries is for the first time officially on the list of debates.
Until 18 November, delegates from almost 200 countries will try to breathe new life into the fight against global warming, while the multiple and interrelated crises that shake the world – war in Ukraine, inflation and threat of recession, food crisis – raise fears that the topic will be in the background.
“We are going to implement together [our commitments] for humanity and for our planet”, pointed out the Egyptian minister Sameh Choukri, who is chairing the summit.
The impacts of climate change have multiplied, as shown by the various disasters that hit the planet in 2022, from the historic floods in Pakistan, to the repeated heat waves in Europe, in addition to hurricanes, fires, or droughts.
The costs of those disasters are already in the tens of billions of euros, for which the countries in the south of the globe, most affected, are demanding financial compensation.
The sensitive topic of “loss and damage” was officially added to the agenda of discussions during the opening ceremony, while until then it was only the subject of dialogue scheduled until 2024.
“The success or failure of COP27 will be judged [by whether or not it reaches an agreement on this damage financing mechanism,” warned Munir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN and chairman of the G77 + China, which represents more from 130 emerging and poor countries.
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