COP27 Highlights, More COP27 Highlights, Even More COP27 Highlights!

COP27 HIGHLIGHTS

COP27’s first week has been chock full of highlights, some good and some bad. We’re going to take a moment to catch everybody up on the solutions. First Big news. Loss and Damages, AKA climate reparations are finally on the docket. Loss refers to the “loss” of lives, cultures or species that can never return. “Damage” refers to the to vital infrastructure that needs to be repaired after climate-driven disasters.

Developing countries have been demanding a discussion on climate reparations since Conference of Parties, or COP, meetings started in the early 1990s. After all, most of them account for about 1% of GHGs. Yet they are the first to suffer now and into the future. Egypt’s Foreign Minister and COP27 president Sameh Shoukry said the breakthrough came after 48 hours of intense talks concluded with a compromise; the discussion would focus on “cooperation and facilitation” not “liability or compensation.” He went on to say, “Inclusion of this agenda reflects a sense of solidarity and empathy with the suffering of the victims.”

Why did it take so long for Loss and Damage to make it onto a COP agenda? And why does it matter to us? Because industrialized nations that have prospered for two centuries at the expense of the planet. They’ve slow-rolled getting loss and damages onto the agenda for decades. That’s because it requires an implicit admission of responsibility by rich countries — and paying a lot of money. There is no official cost estimate, but Pakistan’s floods alone inflicted $30 billion in damage since the end of August; researchers have estimated that climate change made peak rainfall there 75% more intense than it would have been without climate change.

The delegates would aim to reach a conclusive decision on loss and damage “no later than 2024, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said.

DEEPER DIVE: COP27, UNFCC, The Guardian 

MORE COP27 HIGHLIGHTS

For the first time in the history of climate talks, a presidency devoted a full day to the topic. This past Saturday was Adaptation and Agriculture Day. Extreme weather, food inflation and the war in Ukraine strains access to a key breadbasket. All three are highlighting the fragility of food security around the world. 

Food systems account for about a third of emissions, yet only 3% of climate finance has gone into them, a recent analysis from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food shows. Cleaning up farming is a complicated balancing act between cutting emissions without curbing food supplies. That means solutions are needed for alternative food supplies. Several food pavilions at COP27 are showcasing solutions — solutions we’ve highlighted here on The Climate Daily–from vertical farming to dealing with food waste and lab-grown meat. If meaningful progress is going to be made, those solutions need to be scaled up.

DEEPER DIVE: COP27, UNFCC, The Guardian, RI Brazil, 1T.org

EVEN MORE COP27 HIGHLIGHTS!

Deforestation has come up repeatedly in the first week of COP27, as some climate-vulnerable countries demand restrictions on products that cause it and others seek compensation for protecting their own forests. Now, six companies– Suzano, Santander, Brazilian bank Itaú, the Netherlands’  Rabobank, along with Brazilian mining company Vale and Brazilian meatpacker Marfrig  — are creating a new company called Biomas. Biomas is pledging —over the next twenty years– to plant and preserve a total of 4 million hectares (15,000 square miles) of trees in deforested parts of Brazil. That’s an area the size of Switzerland. Each partner will invest $3.8 million. 

How will they do it? Suzano is a paper pulp company which has deep experience. It plants almost 1 million eucalyptus trees daily. Starting in 2025, the group expects to start hiring workers and establishing tree nurseries, where seedlings will be planted before moving to the fields. Biomas expects to finance its project with the sale of carbon credits, and is looking to turn a profit on the forestry projects. 

Why does it matter to us? The Amazon, where deforestation reached a record high in the first half of 2022, is one of the world’s major climate tipping points, creating an urgent need to address the problem. Scientists say that putting a trillion more trees on the planet could dramatically curtail emissions. Several pledges exist to tackle that goal, including a trillion-tree initiative from the World Economic Forum, and the Bonn Challenge, a commitment by multiple countries and companies to plant 350 million hectares of trees by 2030.

DEEPER DIVE: WRI Brazil, 1T.org