Camco on COP27:
Young voices
10 November 2022
It's Youth and Future Generations Day at COP27 today, aiming to help ensure young people's voices are heard loud and clear. While young people at the conference are given the chance to interact with policy makes and practitioners, we asked Camco's youngest staff members what success at COP27 would look like to them.
Alex Holmberg, 24, Finland
Combatting climate change, an existential threat to humankind, will be successful only if governments across the globe manage consistently over the coming decades to take coordinated and effective mitigatory action. COP is a great forum for coordinating that action, but without decisions backed-up by action COP is just talk for the sake of appearances. COP27 needs to urgently deliver on three aspects. First, developed countries need to make firmer commitments on delivering financial assistance to developing countries as already promised in Article 9 of the Paris Agreement but not yet adequately implemented. Second, developed countries need to commit to increased regulation on consumer products to prohibit the sale and distribution of unsustainably produced goods. Third, better coordination is needed on internationally coherent incentives for private capital investments into green infrastructure development and private-sector ventures (especially energy), particularly DFI into developing country markets.
Cherop Soy, 26, Kenya
We are currently living in the decade of action. With only less than 8 years to go, there must be urgent and collaborative action to tackle the climate and ecological crises. A successful COP27 to me is one that will move the needle from pledges and commitments to execution and action, especially with climate finance. The architecture of a just transition is pegged on the monetary support and hence this to me should be the key to unlocking it.
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Find out more news and opinion from Cherop on her blog here.
Faith Muna, 24, Kenya
I have seen little evidence that the world is moving quickly enough in the race to net zero and the implementation of the Paris Agreement, despite the destructive effects of climate change being so obvious. That might sound negative or pessimistic, but when millions of people in the Horn of Africa have been impacted by the worst drought in 40 years, and as the world's population struggles with exposure to catastrophic weather occurrences, my statement is totally valid. I therefore believe it will be a tremendous accomplishment if world leaders could finally formally establish, scale-up and begin the deployment of loss and damage financing in addition to the yearly commitment of USD100 billion to climate finance for adaptation and mitigation. This may be the only way to protect vulnerable livelihoods and ecosystems from our rapidly deteriorating world.
Finnian Shilling, 25, Ireland
As a young person working in climate finance, I have been frustrated by the lack of progress at the most recent COP meetings. The issues that we face become more urgent with every year and yet we still seem content to kick the can down the road. While we are all already feeling the impacts of climate change, it is the developing countries that are and will continue to pay the highest price for something that was caused by the western world. No one wants to have to abandon their home and country, yet we see hundreds of thousands fleeing poorer countries because of drought, famine and floods and the other effects of climate change. Properly dealing with climate change rather than just talking about it will not just avoid an existential threat but serve to make the world a fairer and better place for everyone. I hope genuine and rapid progress comes out of COP27, but I fear our chance to save ourselves is slipping through our fingers.
Yuliia Uhorska, 26, Ukraine
It is high time for the parties to the convention to face the fact that there is no compromising on climate change – it is real, and it requires real action. Overarching failure to meet mitigation targets has already resulted in the need to double adaptation spendings. The question is what’s next, when adaptation measures are also not enough anymore, irrespective of the committed levels of funding? My hope is that COP27 becomes an action platform as opposed to a conference that sets up additional working groups to develop methodologies for calculations of yet another “important indicator”. We don’t want half of the world to have a PhD in climate change – we want it to be kept in check. Otherwise, the future generations will fall victim to a classic flaw of human nature – inclination to being reactive when it’s too late rather than proactive when mitigation is still possible.
