Dark clouds overshadow opening of COP27 climate summit in Egypt

Dark clouds overshadow opening of COP27 climate summit in Egypt

A moment of cheer ahead of the UN climate summit in Egypt was provided by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who put protecting the Amazon rainforest at the heart of his winning campaign for the Brazilian presidency.

But as delegates from nearly 200 countries prepare for the start of the COP27 conference on Sunday, the mood is one of gloom, reflecting the clouds that have gathered since the last summit a year ago in Glasgow.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has ignited an energy crisis that has stoked inflation and threatened food security. Squeezed budgets in wealthy countries are testing their willingness to pay poorer nations to ditch polluting fossil fuels that contribute to dangerous climate change. Serious debt problems are afflicting a number of big developing nations.

“There’s no doubt that the ‘polycrises’ . . . could all combine to make it very difficult to make progress,” said Alden Meyer, senior associate at think-tank E3G.

The Sharm el-Sheikh summit is set to be a more low-key and procedural affair than the plenary that led to the Glasgow Climate Pact, or the summit in Paris seven years ago that produced the deal to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C. Temperatures have already risen at least 1.1C since pre-industrial