What Are The Next Steps After COP27?

The world has been transitioning to a more sustainable future in recent years, especially since the Paris Agreement. With the UN Climate Change Conference happening nearly every year, more decisions are being promised for different countries and continents. Climate change has been observed since the middle of the 20th century, and these changes’ effects have increased broadly in our world.

United Nations has been preparing new conferences and events, and the first one about climate change goes back to the UN Scientific Conference held in 1972 in Stockholm. In 1992 countries agreed to the United Nations Framework Convention, and by 1995 countries launched negotiations, lastly by 1997 Kyoto Protocol was signed. Especially since the 1990s, there have been different conferences on this topic.

What happened in COP26?

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference occurred after a 2-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It took place in Glasgow, Scotland, between the 31st of October and the 13th of November 2021. This event happened with many expectations, as the pandemic significantly affected the different sustainability goals.
**UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (a.k.a. COP, COP26 and COP27)

There were some critical decisions and effects happened during the COP26 event, and here are some:

The COP, CMP and CMA’s respective decisions were mutually agreed upon and named The Glasgow Climate Pact. These urged the parties of the UN Climate Act parties to urge their goals aligned with their 2030 targets and the goals that were decided in the Paris Agreement. These mutually agreed decisions include accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies, adoption of policies, and transition towards a more low-emission energy system. The CMA Pact also points out that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall by 45% by 2030 from the 2010 levels to stay on track to reach net zero by 2050.

Parties of the act approved three elements of Article 6:

Article 6.2 includes decisions towards the cooperative approaches that involve the use of internationally transferred mitigation towards nationally determined contributions. Article 6.4 explains a mechanism to contribute to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and supporting sustainable development. Article 6.8 includes a new approach towards non-market approaches.

Also, some acceptances were from previous events, such as COP acknowledging that financial distributions failed as the 2020 goal was to reach $100 billion a year.

What did we expect from  COP27?

Since last year’s event, the effects of climate change have been seen heavily in the disasters of Pakistan, the Philippines and many more. COP27 is expected to take a serious turn on the governments to take serious actions. The event will likely focus on solutions for adoption, including strategies for climate risks and more.  Developing countries at COP27 have been calling for climate justice in the form of adaptation and loss, also with damage funds.

What are the results of COP27?

Academicians, politicians and more discussed different topics during this event, and many important decisions were made. Here are some of them that we think you should know:

The Loss and Damage Fund was accepted to help developing countries with financial assistance to rebuild physical and social infrastructure as these countries have been dealing with climate change. As this decision is made, it is time to set the funds and make financial decisions.

Also, changes to the World Bank and other publicly funded finance institutions were discussed as the public has been open about this topic. It has been known that developing countries need funding to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

The temperature goal limit was repeated as 1.5 °C after the COP26 in Glasgow. Countries agreed to return next year more focused on this goal. Many other decisions are also affected by this.

Fossil fuel and gas-related parts were included in the final text of the conference to boost lower-emission energy sources. This can mean new investments in solar and wind farms, nuclear plants and carbon capture technologies fitted in already-running fossil fuel plants.

As Faradai, we use our passion and commitment to inspire others and help the world for a better future. Our solution, Faradai Sustain, supports companies with powerful automation tools to capture sustainability data easily. Owners and operators can track their Scope 1,2 and 3 emissions while tracking their sustainability process.

Some links that might be useful for this topic:

• https://climate.nasa.gov/global-warming-vs-climate-change/
• https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-were-the-outcomes-of-cop26/#:~:text=190%20countries%20agreed%20to%20phase,to%20clean%20power%20transition%20statement.
• https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/11/1130347

Author: 

Ayca Guler – Marketing Assistant at Faradai