A plea for negotiators as the COP27 clock starts ticking

Take care of our planet, love our planet.

“Dear climate negotiator,

Did you know that Bangladesh and Pakistan are currently flooded?

That people are getting asthma, like me, due to smog?

I hope you can fix climate change”.

Those are the words of 10-year-old Sara, who sent a postcard to COP27.

Like Sara, many others who are worried about their present – and their futures – urged negotiators in Sharm el-Sheikh today to hear their pleas.

Their main messages: Keep fossil fuels in the ground; keep the call to phase them down in the COP27 outcome text; and keep the goal of curbing global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius alive.

Today was officially ‘Civil Society Day’, combined with one of the most complex climate action themes: ‘Energy’.

We have gathered for our daily wrap the voices of UN agency chiefs, scientists, and experts, as well as of everyday citizens whose communities and livelihoods are being destroyed due to fossil fuel exploitation.

As you read this, negotiators are racing against the clock to finalize the first draft of the outcome decision, juggling diverse viewpoints and political issues.

A draft text of ‘possibilities’ on the agenda item of loss and damage was published this afternoon, but a lot more needs to be worked on. 

The feeling around the halls: anxiousness tempered with a strong sense of hope.

“COP civil societies are not resting. We are going all out. No matter how they push us down. We’re still finding ways to [rise] above them because we need climate action now. So… we hope something better comes out and there are payments for loss and damage,” a Nigerian activist who lost both her parents due to the oil exploration in her country told us today.

There are just three days left before COP27 is set to officially wrap up, and the world is watching.  

We are too. The decisions taken now will affect our future.

“If, in the last two decades, the world had massively invested in renewable energy rather than in its addiction to fossil fuels, we would not be facing the present crisis,” Secretary-General António Guterres said today from the G20 Summit, which is underway in Indonesia. - UN News