Gender focus:
This year November 2022 at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt-- Women remain underrepresented in climate governance and debates, and the COP27 Gender Thematic Day brought together women leading climate at national, regional and the global community level, to discuss matters of gender within the climate agenda.
It was noted that, women continue to bear a disproportionate burden of the adverse impacts created by climate change. It was highlighted that women must be fully integrated into the processes of formulating and implementing policies to ensure fair gender inclusion. As a result, The Gender Thematic Day launched at COP27 aims to bring this issue to the forefront and provided a platform to discuss existing challenges during the sessions space. The sessions held also aim to share success stories from around the world with a view of promoting gender sensitive and highly responsive policies, strategies and actions.
Women and Climate Change Finance at COP27 looked at the role of women in society and business and how addressing inequalities could lead to different outcomes when it comes to climate finance.
African Women Climate Change Realities: Adaptation, Mitigation and Response focused on the crucial role women play in climate change mitigation and adaptation and the need for African governments, civil society, policymakers, to invest in capacity and skill building as well as education of women and girls to enhance awareness.
COVID-19 and climate change: women at the center of planning and response highlighted that women were among the most affected segments of the COVID-19 outbreak.
At the Women Livelihood Within Just Economic Transition, explored the need for gender to be considered as part of ensuring a just and managed transition to a new and more sustainable economic model for women with training and skill building central to success.
Voices of Women Leaders in Climate Debates, Policies, Implementation and Beyond looked at how Women in leadership positions remain a minority but if part of the solution could help to address the hardships brought on by the climate crisis and help deliver viable and tangible solutions.
Conclusively, an 18-year-old spoke at the Closing Ceremony on COP27 and highlighted the importance of knowledge as a potent tool to aid implementation. Dr Maya Mosri, President of the National Council for Women in Egypt, introduced Nevine Ghazi to the audience as a young advocate who reached out during the day wanting to contribute to AWCAP by providing accessible and effective climate education to children particularly in the global South. The ceremony was also attended by H.E. Minister of Environment in Egypt, Dr. Yasmine Fouad; Dr Usha Rao-Monari UN Under Secretary-General and UNDP Associate Administrator; and UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous.
General:
Highlighting the necessity of a just transition, the Egyptian presidency of COP 27 set the following goals for the just concluded event (COP 27): Adaptation, Mitigation, Finance, and Collaboration.
It is indeed ideal to understand that, Climate Change is the greatest environmental challenge of our time. If the world is to meet the agreed climate goals within the available time frame, we needed mature and readily deployable solutions.
This year's COP27 is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh from the 6th to today's date 18th November, 2022. This event hosted delegates from the 198 parties to the UNFCCC. It is to explore the aforementioned themes, as well as biodiversity and decarbonisation.
There is an expectation that, great focus will be placed on how to finance climate change mitigation based on (Article 4 of the Paris Agreement), as well as adaptation policies (Article 7 of the Paris Agreement). Adaptation refers to altering or adjusting behaviour, systems and ways of life to protect society from the impacts of climate change. Mitigation on the other hand calls for ways to make the impacts of climate change less severe for the planet. As things stand, the event looked at ways of promoting a progressive agenda understood as “together for implementation”, indicating the international community recognises it needs to implement environmental and climate-based treaties and agreements.
The intention at COP27 was to get high-income countries to implement their 2009 pledge to support mitigation and adaptation policies. This is likely to include an emphasis on what is increasingly called “climate reparations,” which is related to a loss and damage fund that China and the Group of 77 have argued for, but which high-income countries rejected in Glasgow at (COP26).
Finally, the next session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 28) to the UNFCCC will commence from 30 November to 12 December, 2023. It will take place in the United Arab Emirates.