What happened on the second day of Cop27
Money! Money! Money! has dominated the second full day of Cop27, with a deep chasm emerging between long-time polluting rich states and developing countries that need finance to deal with devastating extreme weather events while also cutting emissions.
Meanwhile, Egypt will be realising that it cannot hold such a significant international conference without its dire human rights record being thrust into the limelight.
Here are some of the highlights from the second day:
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen urged the global north to follow the EU’s example of committing climate finance to the global south.
A report by renowned climate economist Lord Stern showed that $2tn a year would be needed by developing countries (excluding China) by 2030 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate breakdown.
However, civil society climate experts called out “America’s decades-long game plan of denial, delay and deception” when it comes to loss and damage funds.
In one such stark example, Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, said his country needed more than $30bn in flood relief “despite our very low carbon footprints”.
However, Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley celebrated that loss and damage had been added to the agenda of Cop27.
The family of jailed British-Egyptian hunger-striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah voiced fears that Egyptian officials may be torturing him behind closed doors through force-feeding. A pro-government Egyptian MP confronted Abd el-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, outside the conference.
The plight of Abd el-Fattah has become the defining issue for British-Egyptian relations, the former British ambassador to Egypt John Casson warned.
For the first time in years, Egypt has unblocked access to the Human Rights Watch website, a day after the Guardian described how delegates at Cop27 were unable to access it.
A UN group set up to crack down on the greenwashing of net zero pledges by industry and government has called for “red lines” to stop support for new fossil fuel exploration and overuse of carbon offsets.
Tuvalu has become the first country to use United Nations climate talks to demand an international fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, which would phase out the use of coal, oil and gas.
Temperatures in Ireland were so mild this autumn that trees were producing new growth before they shed their leaves, according to the Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin.
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The Barbados prime minister, Mia Mottley, has celebrated that “loss and damage” – the idea that developed countries that grew rich off fossil fuels should pay poorer countries – has been added to the agenda of Cop27.
Here’s an explainer on the term loss and damage, which is quite simple but confusing without context:
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Ukraine president says ending war in Ukraine is vital for climate
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has spoken to the summit from Kyiv.
“There can be no effective climate policy without peace,” he said.
Russia’s invasion has caused chaos in global energy supplies, food prices and Ukraine’s forests, he said.
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Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s family fear he may be being force-fed in Egyptian prison
The family of jailed British-Egyptian hunger-striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah have voiced fears that Egyptian officials may be torturing him behind closed doors through force-feeding.
On the sidelines of the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi reportedly told the French president, Emmanuel Macron, that he was “committed” to ensuring the democracy activist’s health “is preserved” and that “the next few weeks and months will bring results”.
Abd el-Fattah was due to be on his third day without water as Cop27 continued, after more than six months on a hunger strike during which he consumed fewer than 100 calories a day.
“I’m really worried from these comments that they’re implying they will be force-feeding Alaa. Force-feeding is torture, and nothing should happen that’s against Alaa’s will,” Sanaa Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister, said.
“We need proof of life. The scenario I imagine is that Alaa is handcuffed somewhere and put on an intravenous drip against his will. That would be torture, and he shouldn’t be living that. The solution is simply just to let the British embassy see him.”
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Mexico will try to ‘deceive the world’ at Cop27, experts warn
Mexico, one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, is expected to announce a hotchpotch of old, inadequate and undeliverable climate promises that will leave its Paris pledges in tatters, experts have warned.
Climate action has nosedived under the leadership of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had to be blocked from rolling back Mexico’s modest Paris greenhouse gas targets by the country’s supreme court, and emissions are rising.
John Kerry, the US climate envoy, said last week that the Mexican president, also known as Amlo, would make a major announcement on the country’s climate commitments during Cop27. No official announcement has yet been made, and Amlo is not expected to attend the UN summit in Egypt, but reports suggest that the announcements will include:
A reduction in methane emissions from the state-owned oil company, Pemex – an important but existing target for which Pemex has been fined for non-compliance.
A 1,000MW state-opened solar plant – construction is already under way for a 180MW project, and the government had previously already ruled out further investment to expand the energy potential.
A lithium commitment. Mexico has the ninth-largest identified deposits of lithium – a crucial mineral for electric vehicles and other green technologies – but there has been no government investment so far in advancing extraction, and none is currently being mined. Experts say the country is years away from producing its first gram of lithium.
“It’s highly likely that the Mexican government will try to deceive the entire world at Cop27 with false actions and projects that will never be built,” said Carlos Flores, a renewable energy expert in Mexico. “We are not going to meet our current pledges, never mind anything more ambitious.”
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There have been many extreme weather disasters this year made more severe or more likely by the climate crisis, but none on the devastating scale of the floods in Pakistan. At Cop27, Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, laid bare the impact and just how high the stakes are at this UN climate meeting, warning other countries they could face a similar fate.
Shehbaz Sharif said:
The catastrophic floods impacted 33 million people, more than half our women and children, [covering] the size of three European countries. Despite seven times the average of extreme rain in the south, we struggled on as raging torrents ripped out over 8,000km of metal roads, damaged more than 3,000km of railway track and washed away standing crops on 4m acres and ravaged all of the four corners of Pakistan.
An estimate of damage of loss has exceeded $30bn and this all happened despite our very low carbon footprints. We became a victim of something with which we had nothing to do, and of course it was a manmade disaster.
While we were grappling and fighting against these torrential floods, we had to import wheat, palm oil and of course very expensive oil and gas – spending about $30bn to $32bn. We redirected our meagre resources to meet the basic needs of millions of [people] and had to dish out about $316m. Now winter is settling in and we need to provide shelter homes and medical treatment and food package to millions of people.
Imagine on one hand we have to cater for food security for the common man by spending billions of dollars and on the other we have to spend billions of dollars to protect flood-affected people from further miseries and difficulties. How on earth can one expect from us that we will undertake this gigantic task on our own?
The delivery of money from the rich, polluting nations to the poorer, vulnerable nations has become the critical issue at Cop27 – read more here.
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The Guardian’s senior climate justice reporter, Nina Lakhani, is moderating a panel at Cop27 on climate justice and human rights.
Panellists include the heads of the two major global human rights groups, Amnesty International (Agnès Callamard) and Human Rights Watch (Tirana Hassan).
Sanaa Seif, the sister of the jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, and Hossam Bahgat, the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, are also speaking.
You can watch it live here:
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New Zealand announces NZ$20m fund for lost land and resources
New Zealand has announced a $20m climate fund for land and resources lost by developing countries to the effects of the climate crisis.
“Comparatively wealthy countries like Aotearoa New Zealand have a duty to support countries most at-risk from climate change. The best way to do that is to cut climate pollution, but so too must we support communities to cope with the unavoidable impacts of the climate crisis,” said foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta.
The government said it was one of only three countries to dedicate such funding so far.
The bulk of the fund will likely be distributed in the Pacific, where New Zealand has close partnerships and “the loss of land and resources from sea-level rise is a well-known threat,” said Mahuta. “Loss and damage is happening to homes and crops and fisheries, but it also happens to cultures, languages, people’s mental health and their physical wellbeing.”
Cop27 is likely to discuss a centralised fund for international commitments for loss and damage in poorer countries. Mahuta said New Zealand was “not opposed to this” but would “also support a wide range of funding arrangements to make best use of our contribution”.
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Readers – or rather, non-readers – if you have recently joined and are looking for a concise and focused way to catch up, then listen to this podcast.
Made by our colleagues at Guardian Australia, it is a fantastic explainer of what is happening at Cop27, and what is at stake. (Spoiler: Everything)
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A reader has emailed me to ask if we know what temperature rise the world is “on track” for.
“Where does the current state of play lead us to?” the reader asks.
Unfortunately, the UN said just last week that current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions will lead to global heating of 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown.
That is based on governments fulfilling their pledges, and even then, it is far above the 1.5C goal, which would avoid the worst ravages of extreme weather.
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UN experts demand crackdown on greenwashing of net zero pledges
A UN group set up to crack down on the greenwashing of net zero pledges by industry and government has called for “red lines” to stop support for new fossil fuel exploration and overuse of carbon offsets.
The “high-level expert group”, created in March by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to advise on rules to improve integrity and transparency in net zero commitments by industry, regions and cities, said climate plans must include deep cuts in greenhouse gases before 2030, and not delay action until closer to 2050.
It stressed serious commitments must prioritise immediate cuts in absolute emissions, with the use of carbon offsets – an often controversial practice that allows companies and governments to pay for cuts elsewhere instead of reducing their own pollution – to be used sparingly in later years, if at all. Rules were needed to ensure offsets were high-quality and came from a reliable and verifiable source, the group said.
The group of experts was created after widespread concern about greenwashing, including claims by major fossil fuel companies that they were aiming for net zero emissions by 2050 while backing new coal, oil and gas developments and relying heavily on offsets.
A Guardian investigation this year revealed that oil and gas companies, including several with net zero pledges, were still planning vast new developments that would push the world well beyond the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris agreement.
My colleague and Environment editor, Damian Carrington, has been speaking to the creator of this remarkable sculpture at Cop27:
“We are the environment and the environment is us - we can’t be separated,” says artist Victoria Pratt, part of the Invisible Flock collective, who made a striking sculpture for the World Health Organization’s health pavilion at Cop27.
“The sculpture is both a lung and a tree,” she says. It was made by casting fallen branches in metal, and then inverting them to resemble a giant lung. The parallel between the bronchioles of the lung and the branches of the tree is fractal growth patterns, which are shared by humans, plants and animals.
“We wanted something that was both scientific and metaphorical,” Pratt said. The sculpture, titled Bodies Joined by a Molecule of Air and cast in Lebanon, also pulsates to the touch, like a human body.
Other artworks at the WHO pavilion include tiny bottles of tears in which algae from the North Sea grows, along with notes from the artist Kasia Molga on why she cried at the time each tiny glass bottle was filled. “Can environmental health be an indicator of our own health?” she asks.
In another piece, a podcast weaves bees buzzing in the high-swinging hives of Mau Forest, Kenya, with the singing and speech of the Ogiek indigenous community for whom honey is an intrinsic part of their culture.
Dr Maria Neira, WHO director of public health and environment, says the climate crisis and health are intimately connected: “The price of not taking decisions to fight climate change is paid by our lungs, when you breathe polluted air, and many other organs. I think health will be the final motivation that has been missing from the 26 previous Cops. I don’t see what else can be.”
Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, a WHO clean air advocate, also spoke at the event. Her daughter Ella was the first person to have air pollution cited as a cause of death, when she died in London aged nine in 2013. “Ella would want you to think about all those we could save in the future,” Kiss-Debrah says. “Every minute, a child dies from air pollution, but they don’t have a voice. I hope Ella is a voice for them.” The pavilion features a film about Ella, currently being shown at the Wellcome Collection in London, UK.
Omnia El Omrani is the youth envoy for the Cop27 president and a doctor in Cairo and says she sees her patients suffering from air pollution and increasing heat: “We see first-hand that climate change is not just an environmental problem, but a health problem.”
Neira’s message to those at COP27 is simple:
If they take the right decisions, our health will gain. If they take the wrong decisions, our health will lose.
An international report published in October said the health of the world’s people is at the mercy of a global addiction to fossil fuels and found an increase in heat deaths, hunger and infectious disease as the climate crisis intensifies.
After pressure, Egypt unblocks access to Human Rights Watch website
For the first time in years, Egypt has unblocked access to the Human Rights Watch website, a day after the Guardian described how delegates at Cop27 were unable to access it during the conference.
BREAKING: Human Rights Watch website and others are unblocked in #Egypt for the first time in several years. Egyptians can now access the facts about the government's clampdown on environmental groups and other abuses. Live from #COP27 @hrw pic.twitter.com/F6qMQ7Nydu
— Shantha Rau Barriga (@ShanthaHRW) November 8, 2022
Yet the website of Mada Masr, Egypt’s lone independent news outlet, which has endured raids on its offices and repeated attacks by the Egyptian state, remains blocked on the conference internet.
Mada Masr and HRW’s websites, along with more than 600 others – some estimates put the figure as high as 700 – have been blocked in the country since 2017, after Egypt began using Canadian technology to stop access to a broad swath of news, political and human rights websites several years ago. The block also came in tandem with a prolonged crackdown on civil society in Egypt, forcing many activists and rights defenders to flee the country, while others faced travel bans and arrest for their work.
The lack of access to information represents Egypt’s attempt to prevent Cop27 attendees from accessing information about the country’s dismal human rights record.
Conference attendees said the website block at Cop27 had curtailed their ability to work.
While the unblocking of HRW’s website during the conference is good news for the next couple of weeks, the test will come after the summit when Egyptcould decide to block the website again, outside of the focus that Cop27 brings on the crackdown on free expression.
Egyptian officials have never provided any public explanation about why they block websites, and local activists have said they fear reprisals for attending the UN climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Here is yesterday’s story on the Cop27 internet restrictions:
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Here is the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, calling on the global north to follow the EU’s example and commit to climate financing in the global south.
“Team Europe is providing its fair share of the $100bn promise,” she said.
“It is doable and we call on others to step up too.”
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Temperatures in Ireland have been so mild this autumn that trees are producing new growth before they have even shed their leaves, Micheál Martin, the Irish taoiseach, has said.
Climate breakdown is causing “abject human misery”, he said, particularly in the global south, for countries that have not contributed as much carbon.
He added:
If this generation does not step up urgently, future generations will not forgive us.
Ireland would exceed the climate justice finance commitments asked of it, he claimed, and called for others to do the same.
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Here are some photos from the conference:
I’m Oliver Holmes and will be with you until the end of a busy day at Cop27.
You can send me stories, tips, and opinions by emailing oliver.holmes@theguardian.com or via Twitter (@olireports).
Climate experts call out US for blocking 'loss and damage' funds
As the US climate envoy John Kerry walked the halls of the conference centre today, civil society climate experts called out “America’s decades-long game plan of denial, delay and deception” when it comes to ‘loss and damage’.
In what’s clearly become the red line for climate-vulnerable countries and climate justice advocates, Harjeet Singh, a senior adviser at the Climate Action Network (CAN), said:
The US has for decades acted in bad faith with regards to loss and damage, but the delays and deception have real life consequences. We need to agree on a funding facility at this Cop so we can work on making it operational by 2024, and the US needs to change from being obstructive to constructive.
Loss and damage refers to the money needed to cover the vast economic, cultural and social consequences of the climate crisis that have already happened or are too late to avert with either adaptation or mitigation - impacts mostly being experienced by the countries that have least contributed to the greenhouse gases causing global heating. For years, the US and other large polluters including the EU, UK, Canada, and Australia have used their political and economic muscle to block and delay progress on setting up such a fund that is desperately needed by island nations and other vulnerable countries.
Amid growing criticism, Kerry softened his language in the run-up to the summit, claiming that the US is open to discussions on loss and damage. After a hard-fought battle over the weekend, it is on the Cop agenda for the first time. But the US is pushing for another two years of dialogue - a delayRachel Rose Jackson from the Union of Concerned Scientists said would be a “severe, unjust blow for those suffering the worst effects of the climate crisis”.
Jackson added:
The litmus test for Cop27 is meaningful progress on loss and damage, which means the US needs to stop obstructing so we can establish a funding facility this year.
Separately, Austria announced $50m for climate loss and damage, shortly after Scotland’s first minister pledged an additional £5m to support developing countries with direct finance to cope with the unavoidable, devastating impacts of the climate crisis. This means that five European countries - Austria, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark and Germany - have committed to fund the loss and damage finance mechanism that the US wants to avoid.
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A summary of day 2 of Cop27 so far
• The Cop27 high-level segment for heads of state and government continued, with more world leaders calling for urgent action on the climate crisis. There were many references to the issue of loss and damage, the funding demanded by poorer nations to rebuild after accelerating climate disasters, which made it onto the official agenda for the talks. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, urged the global north to follow the EU’s example of committing climate finance to the global south.
• Lazarus Chakwera, the president of Malawi, told the summit: “As nature lashes out, our citizens are losing patience,” while the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, said “the total collapse of our ecosystem ... appears to be our fatal destiny”. Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, said: “The most valuable contribution that developed countries can make is to reduce their emissions faster while investing in Africa to build sustainable, green power.”
• Tuvalu has become the first country to use United Nations climate talks to demand an international fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, which would phase out the use of coal, oil and gas.
• The release of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the detained British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist who is on hunger strike, has become the defining issue for British-Egyptian relations, the former British ambassador to Egypt John Casson has warned.
• John Kerry, the US climate envoy, has vowed that Joe Biden’s administration will press ahead on climate action regardless of the outcome of today’s midterm elections.
I am now handing over the blog to Oliver Holmes. Thank you for reading the Guardian.
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Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has urged the global north to follow the EU’s example of committing climate financing to the global south.
She said: “Those most in need in the developing world must be supported in adapting to a harsher climate. We urge our partners in the global north to stand by their climate finance commitments to the global south.”
Though the developed world has not yet met its commitment to give $100bn in climate finance, she said: “Team Europe is stepping up … despite Covid, despite the Russian war.”
She highlighted the need to reach the Paris goals and said: “Europe is staying the course. We call on all major emitters to increase their ambitions too.”
Von der Leyen also highlighted the hydrogen deals Europe had struck with Egypt and other countries, commenting: “The global south has the resources in abundance, so let’s team up.”
She trumpeted the EU’s renewable energy record, and said over the next year 100GW of additional renewable energy capacity could be achieved.
“Every kilowatt per hour we generate from green energy is not only good for the climate, it is good for our resilience,” the leader explained.
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My colleague, the Guardian US climate reporter Oliver Milman, has written about Tuvalu becoming the first country to use United Nations climate talks to demand an international fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, which would phase out the use of coal, oil and gas.
He writes:
“The small Pacific Islands nation, which is acutely vulnerable to sea level rises caused by global heating, becomes the second country to call for an agreement to end the era of burning fossil fuels, which is the primary cause of the rapidly escalating climate crisis, fellow Pacific nation Vanuatu being the first.”
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Money still top of the agenda at this Cop
As the remaining world leaders hold another day of closed door meetings – and in a few of them, they might even discuss climate, rather than the other political issues that dominated their bilateral talks yesterday – money is still top of the agenda. Heads of state control the purse strings, and as the scale of the financing issue becomes clearer, it’s a key bone of contention at this Cop.
Developing countries are not getting access to the finance they need, both to cut their own greenhouse gas emissions, and to cope with the impacts of extreme weather.
On Tuesday, a report by Lord Stern, the climate economist, showed that $2 trillion a year would be needed by developing countries (excluding China) by 2030 to achieve this.
That sounds enormous. However, the climate crisis encompasses vast swathes of a country’s economy – energy, transport, industry, housing, food. There is scarcely an area of spending, or revenue, that is untouched.
So when talking about investment in the climate crisis, we are also talking about investment in every aspect of a country’s economic, and socio-economic, situation. That’s why the sums appear so huge, but in fact are not that different from the aggregate of investment that would be needed anyway, to lift developing economies to a decent standard of living.
The benefits of this investment are also huge. When people in the developing world gain access to clean electricity from wind or solar farms, children can do their homework, people can conduct business, and have more leisure options, modern medicine can function. These social benefits are a huge lever to increase prosperity and improve people’s lives.
One immediate reaction to Stern’s report – which was commissioned jointly by the UK and the Egyptian governments, presidents of Cop26 and 27 respectively – in some quarters has been to claim developing countries want the rich world to cough up these trillions.
That is not quite the case. Private sector investment is likely to be much greater than anything the public sector can muster, but for private sector investment to flow, countries need some initial help.
That’s because private sector companies charge a huge risk premium for any investment in the developing world. Set up a solar farm in Nigeria instead of the UK, and your profits are likely to be much greater – people still pay good sums for the electricity but the sun in Nigeria shines more reliably and labour and associated costs are low. That’s not reflected in the financing, however: a bank will charge you seven times more interest for the same project in Nigeria as in a developed country. That makes capital much harder to access and projects much more difficult – if not impossible – to get off the ground.
Yet few countries have any trouble tapping up banks to lend for fossil fuel projects – because banks are used to such lending and are willing to splash out on oil and gas.
So most of the $2 trillion of investment needed will still come from the private sector, but for it to flow takes some reforms in the finance sector, including restraints on fossil fuels, and some of what financiers call pump-priming (an initial investment of public money) and for the public sector to underwrite some of the risks.
Diverting fossil fuel finance into clean energy alone would make a big dent in the trillions needed. Countries are also still subsidising fossil fuels to the extent of hundreds of billions a year around the world.
Trillions of investment will pour over the next few decades into developing countries in any case. It is time to see that this investment is directed towards clean ends, rather than scaremongering over demands from the poor.
Minds were focused again on loss and damage when listening to the impassioned speech by José Maria Neves, who represents the volcanic island state of Cabo Verde.
He said it “is one of the most vulnerable countries in Africa and in the world”, because it is a “small developing island state with one of the lowest emissions of greenhouse gases per capita in the world”, contributing “almost nothing” to climate change, but “has suffered greatly from the consequences of climate change, jeopardising the years of progress we have made towards sustainable development.”
This includes long droughts, salt water intrusion and worsening of ground water, degradation of soils and the loss of biodiversity.
“For small island developing states such as Cabo Verde, it is essential that they should be able to access global financing,” he said.
Chandrikapersad Santokhi, the president of Suriname, a tropical country on the north-east coast of South America, made a similar point. “We are in fact carbon negative but we are facing the impacts,” he said, with the coastline threatened by sea-level rise. He said that despite limited resources, the country is investing to protect its natural assets such as its mangrove forests, which store carbon and are valuable for the whole world.
In a relatively upbeat speech, António Costa, the prime minister of Portugal, pointed out that his country has managed to mitigate many of the effects of the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine crisis because of its strong investments in renewables.
“Portugal, which started to invest in renewable energies 15 years ago, is an example of how investing in transition ensures we are safer from a fuel emergency,” he said. The country is set to be carbon neutral by 2045, he said, which is earlier than the 2050 goal set by many other countries, and it has joined up with France and Spain to create a “green energy corridor”. The country abandoned coal eight years earlier than planned, and Costa has said he does not think the Ukraine war will cause the country to reverse the decision.
Surangel Whipps, the president of Palau, had a less cheering message. He said rather than leave his people to the ravages of the climate emergency, “You might as well bomb us. That might well have been an easier fate.”
He said: “The climate crisis is tearing us apart limb by limb. Just last Monday we were hit by another storm, ripping off roofs and destroying our infrastructure. Droughts have caused water shortages. The extreme heat this summer killed over 30m of our prized and beautiful jellyfish that are world renowned because they are stingless.”
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Sanaa Seif has been holding a press conference in Egypt to demand the release from jail of her brother, the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah. He is currently being held in a desert prison, where he continues to refuse all food and water, while his family wait for proof of his condition, according to latest reports.
Guardian video producer Nikhita Chulani was at the press conference and writes:
“Sanaa Seif was confronted by a pro-regime Egyptian lawmaker during a press conference in which she was pleading for the UK government to help secure proof of life for her brother Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
The jailed British-Egyptian activist has been on hunger strike for more than half a year, and told his family shortly before the beginning of the UN climate summit that he would begin a water strike.
While taking questions from the media, the MP Amr Darwish interrupted Seif, questioning why her family was seeking British support to free her brother. He said this was a legal case that should be dealt with by the Egyptian government, adding that the country would not bow to Western pressure.
Abd el-Fattah is a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, whose writings on protests, technology and democracy have affected a generation across the Middle East, even though he has spent most of the past decade behind bars. Last year, he was sentenced to a further five years in prison for sharing a social media post about torture.
Speaking to the Guardian today, Seif said she fears the Egyptian authorities will begin force feeding her brother in order to guarantee nothing happens ‘while the world is watching’ during the climate conference.”
Sanaa Seif speaking after being confronted by an Egyptian MP during her press conference pleading with the UK government to help provide for proof of life for her brother Alaa Abd el-Fattah #Cop27 pic.twitter.com/ouErED1ZUL
— Nikhita Chulani (@NChulani) November 8, 2022
The Guardian has been committed to covering Abd el-Fattah’s case in depth, and the wider issues of climate justice and human rights. In case you missed it, this long read by Naomi Klein was published last month, in which she argues: “The message activists should bring to the [Cop27] climate summit, whether they travel to Egypt or engage from afar, is simple: unless political freedoms are defended, there will be no meaningful climate action. Not in Egypt, nor anywhere else. These issues are intertwined, as are our fates.”
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The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, delivered strong words at the climate summit today.
“Many elites have denied [climate change] and yet the scientific community warned about it very early on,” he said.
He said more should have been done over the last 30 years to declare it an emergency and act accordingly. “We still remember [the Cop15 climate summit in 2009 in] Copenhagen, we still remember police brutality repression in the streets against the social movements and what happened since then. We have wasted a lot of time since then. Every hour, every month, every year we have hesitated.”
Maduro touched on issues of climate justice, pointing out that Venezuela is responsible for just 0.4% of greenhouse gases worldwide. And he made a stark prediction: “The planet had given us all we needed for life generously yet today we are having to pay this great toil because of our actions. Today the threat is the total collapse of our ecosystem...it appears to be our fatal destiny.”
Before this, in his speech to conference, Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, was scathing about the global north’s attitude towards Africa. He pointed out that during the Covid-19 pandemic, external financing did not work for vulnerable nations, who were left to bear the worst impacts. Kagame said this cannot happen with the climate emergency.
“The most valuable contribution that developed countries can make is to reduce their emissions faster while investing in Africa to build sustainable, green power. Questioning whether Africa is ready to make use of climate finance should not be used as an excuse to justify inaction.”
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I’ve been looking at what some climate scientists on Twitter have been saying about Cop27. Here is a small selection:
The outcome of #COP27 would be very different if attendance were limited to only those who will be alive in 2050.
— David Ho (@_david_ho_) November 7, 2022
Dr Chandni Singh has been checking out the displays at different country pavilions, including one from Pakistan.
#Pakistan has had enough, no more mincing words.
— Dr Chandni Singh (@_chandnisingh) November 7, 2022
"What goes on in Pakistan won't stay in Pakistan"
Climate change is the biggest #commons conundrum if there ever was one. #cop27 pic.twitter.com/YTNNxghLfd
Professor Mark Maslin lists actions that governments at Cop should take.
#COP27 Government Actions Now
— Professor Mark Maslin (@ProfMarkMaslin) November 6, 2022
🪨 Ban coal worldwide
⛽️ Remove fossil fuel subsidies
⚡️ Switch to renewable energy
🛢 Phase out gas & oil
♻️ circular economy ⏫
🚗 Ban non-electric vehicles
🚴🏾 walking/cycling ⏫
🚜 sustainable farming
🏠 Low carbon buildings
🌳 Reforest/rewild pic.twitter.com/vzIkaWtj8X
While Hannah Cloake puts it more bluntly.
The leaders of nations gathering in Egypt at #COP27 may feel like they have a lot on their plates at the moment.
— Hannah Cloke (@hancloke) November 6, 2022
But history will judge them, and us, as the most pathetic, short sighted and stupid generation that ever lived if we continue to ignore the evidence
Ed Hawkins, known for his graphic of the Warming Stripes, reminds us how long we have known about global heating.
84 years ago we understood that burning fossil fuels was raising the levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere, and causing the planet to warm.
— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) November 7, 2022
The theory was understood earlier but this was the first observation & attribution of climate change. #COP27
In 1938.https://t.co/AfIXXeYM8h pic.twitter.com/sJY3Wurcei
And finally some scientists have given reasons for why they are not attending Cop27.
I haven't flown in a plane since 2012 as I see so clearly how every flight makes the Earth irreversibly hotter and everything that means. No way I'd fly to a corporate greenwash-fest like #COP27. COP must prove it's serious about ending the fossil fuel industry. That's on them.
— Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman) November 7, 2022
World leaders issue climate warnings
There have been warnings of the dangers of global heating for decades and Assoumani Azali, the president of Comoros, recalls one. He quotes then French president Jacques Chirac: “Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere.” Chirac said that in 2002.
Twenty years later this warning is still relevant, says Azali. Cyclone Kenneth devastated his country in 2019, he says, and the damage is still being repaired.
Mohamed Menfi, the president of Libya, points out the danger of sea level rise. “We have the longest coastline in the Mediterranean sea, where 95% of our people live,” he says. He also says water is becoming scarcer, soil more saline and erosion is worsening. Despite the ongoing political crisis, Menfi says: “We can only be part of this world.”
Lazarus Chakwera, the president of Malawi, choose rhetorical power over the detail-driven speeches of many of the world leaders. “As nature lashes out, our citizens are losing patience,” he says. “To pass this test of leadership we must act with courage, urgency and humanity
Alexander van der Bellen, the president of Austria, recalls a high-profile piece of rhetoric by Greta Thunberg in in 2021: “There is far too much blah blah blah and far too little concrete action,” he says.
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The most controversial issue at Cop27 is loss and damage, the funding demanded by poorer nations to rebuild after accelerating climate disasters, and which some campaigners call reparations. Ranil Wickremesinghe, president of Sri Lanka, raises this in the context of colonialism. “The practice of colonialism extracted resources from Asia and Africa to fuel industrialisation in rich nations,” he said. “We became poor from this plunder.”
Wickremesinghe says this industrialisation caused the climate crisis hitting poorer countries now. He also calls out rich nations: “The G7 and G20 are backtracking to use more fossil fuels - such double standards are unacceptable.” We will find out what has happened to global carbon emissions in 2022 later this week but the news is unlikely to be good.
Food, and the huge emissions its production causes, has often been marginalised at COPs but for Khurelsukh Ukhnaa, the president of Mongolia, it is his top priority amid hunger and high prices around the world. “Humans, food and soil are inextricably linked and fighting climate change is intrinsic to protecting soil,” he says. He does not mention tackling the terrible air pollution in Mongolian cities, but says the nation has joined the methane cutting pledge started at Cop26, which would help limit the impact of Mongolia’s coal mines.
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Midterms results won't derail US climate ambition - Kerry
John Kerry, the US climate envoy, has vowed that Joe Biden’s administration will press ahead on climate action regardless of the outcome of today’s midterm elections, which are expected to go badly for Democrats.
Kerry, speaking at the US pavilion at Cop27, said that he hoped Congress would agree to expand funding for developing countries to help deal with climate impacts but that “even if we don’t, folks, president Biden is more determined than ever to continue what we are doing”.
“Most of what we are doing cannot be changed by anyone else coming along,” Kerry added, noting that cities and states across America banded together to commit to the Paris climate agreement when Donald Trump removed the US from the pact when president.
US officials in Egypt hope that the inflation reduction act bill passed in August, which contains more than $370bn in climate spending and was called “one of the single most important pieces of legislation over the past 50 years or so” by Kerry in his speech, will drive deep cuts in emissions regardless of the midterms.
It’s widely expected, however, that Republicans will win at least one house of Congress in the elections. The GOP has decried what it calls Biden’s “radical green agenda” and could stall or hamper the rollout of measures aimed at boosting renewable energy deployment. Biden arrives at Cop27 on Friday, potentially in a downcast mood following the outcome of the elections.
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Andrzej Duda, president of Poland, tells Cop27 the country is a “model” of sustainable development, which will surprise some in Europe who have long witnessed the coal-rich nation fighting tougher climate action.
At least he didn’t mention coal. Cop24 in Katowice, Poland, was infused for two weeks by the smell of burning coal.
Duda also says: “Let us not be hypocrites - it is easy for rich countries to boast of our action.” He says if manufacturing has moved to other countries, the importing countries still bear some responsibility. “There is just one climate.”
Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, president of Zimbabwe, is wearing a colourful scarf in his country’s national colours. The air conditioning is ridiculously cold in the plenary hall.
He calls for African unity at Cop27: “We must speak with one voice [and] act as a block of climate victims. Only then are we likely to carry the day and secure a healthy planet for present and future generations.” There is disagreement among African countries over the development of new oil and gas fields.
Climate finance is critical for progress at Cop27 - see this piece - and Mnangagwa says: “Those mostly responsible for the climate crisis must listen and prioritise climate finance.”
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Cop27 has been termed the African Cop – but we have reported on the difficulties some African activists have faced in attending the summit. And yesterday our video reporter in Sharm el-Sheikh, Nikhita Chulani, spoke to the Ugandan activist Nyombi Morris who was turned away from the talks.
When 24-year-old Ugandan activist Nyombi Morris arrived in Egypt for the Cop27 climate summit he was turned away from the high-level talks because he did not have the right accreditation. Only country delegates and some members of the press were allowed in the events for heads of states and government officials.
“Why are we here?”, asked Nyombi, adding that the world leaders and negotiators who are currently deciding how far to push climate action need to quickly change the way they work and who they listen to, saying right now he doesn’t think it is right to truly call this an African Cop.
“You have to frontline the voices of African youth activists, because these are the innovators. These are the ones implementing actions, not our leaders, our leaders are just always in the office, but you are excluding us. So it is time to understand that this event is in Africa. We need to give African voices a chance ... We cannot lead without knowledge.”
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The speeches by leaders have begun, with Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, kicking off with a legal warning to rich countries who have not provided adequate climate finance to date. “We will fight unrelentingly for climate justice,” including in the international courts, he said. Browne speaks for the Alliance of Small Island States, whose countries are set to sink beneath rising oceans.
Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, is next, stressing Africa’s need for “a just energy transition”, given that 600 million people on the continent do not have electricity.
Sall also echoes the words of Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, yesterday by saying: “We are being doubly punished”, once for the colonialism that underpinned the industrial revolution, and now by the impacts of the carbon emissions it caused.
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Last year’s Cop26, in Glasgow, delivered a global climate deal and lots of promises, including on coal use, deforestation, methane and climate finance. So how much progress has been made? Our Guardian US climate reporter, Oliver Milman, has done an expert analysis of five key pledges and what has been achieved, or not. “The last year has been a missed opportunity by many countries,” David Waskow, the director of the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, told him.
What's happening today?
In terms of highlights to watch out for today, Guardian reporter Patrick Greenfield has picked out the following:
“South African prime minister Cyril Ramaphosa is holding a press conference at 10am UK time where he is likely to speak about the landmark $8.5bn financing deal to help end its reliance on coal announced just a year ago at Cop26.
Ramaphosa said the deal with money from the USA, EU, UK, Germany and France was a “watershed moment” for the world’s 13th largest carbon emitter, according to the Global Carbon Atlas.
Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, is also holding a press conference at 2.30pm UK time. She is one of the most influential voices from the Global South on loss and damage, a key issue at Cop27.
Tensions between China and Canada will raise concerns about the biodiversity Cop15, which the two countries are jointly hosting in Montreal next month. Side events for the key nature summit, where governments will agree this decade’s targets for halting the destruction of biodiversity, are being held during both weeks at the climate Cop27 in Egypt.
Yesterday, Justin Trudeau warned that China is “play[ing] aggressive games” to undermine democratic institutions amid reports Beijing actively interfered in Canada’s federal elections. It will be one to watch.”
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Welcome to the Guardian’s live blog of the second day of Cop27, the United Nations climate conference taking place in Egypt. Yesterday, more than 100 world leaders gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh to hear the UN secretary general António Guterres warn that the world was on a “highway to hell” and the prime minster of Barbados, Mia Mottley, condemn industrialised nations for failing the developed world on the climate crisis. You can read a full report here. Today, we’ll hear more speeches from countries around the world, before the negotiations begin in earnest on Wednesday.
I’m Natalie Hanman, the Guardian’s head of environment. Please send me any thoughts, stories or tips via email natalie.hanman@theguardian.com or Twitter @NatalieHanman.
