I've been catching up on COP27 news this week, belatedly. Here are three main takeaways in case you didn't manage to follow it:
1. Sticking to 1.5 degrees
Nations have agreed to keep a rise of 1.5 degrees as their primary target (rather than relaxing it to 2 degrees, which some were concerned may happen, despite IPCC warnings). However, some have taken this to mean pushing for more gas (which creates less emissions than coal) instead of finding solutions to get us off fossil fuels. Also, the agreement that 2025 should be the peak year of emissions has been axed. Not so great.
2. Loss & Damage
This has been officially acknowledged in the form of a fund. This is huge! The term Loss & Damage refers to the impacts that many less financially wealthy nations have already felt from climate change (did you realise Pakistan is still under water after the floods?) and asks for the richer countries with vast carbon outputs to pull their socks up and help with compensation. The fund still needs to be set up, and nations actually need to put the cold hard cash in, which will be arduous, BUT the main thing is the countries that are feeling climate change NOW have finally got the high-emitters to admit that they owe them some help. Phew.
3. Fossil fuels
Not much agreed here that's different to Glasgow last year, although it's been agreed that nations will look to boost 'low emission energy'.
This only scratches the surface of the interesting, frustrating and important conversations happening. I highly recommend the podcast Outrage and Optimism for excellent, fair, in depth analysis of the ongoing climate issues as well as The Guardian for well-rounded coverage of environmental issues.
In other environment news this week...
The Earth Shot Prize has financially boosted some incredible projects, including Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef, an inspiring program that combines 60,000 years of indigenous knowledge with digital technologies to protect land and sea.
the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) has just begun in Canada. Fingers crossed that the latter can work some magic...