Hello, how are you?
Hi, I am very well thank you although also I am also feeling quite tired and worrying about all the jobs I haven't done and all the things people would like me to do which I haven't done.
Scallywag 2: We are going to ask you a few questions about the cop 27 in Egypt. You have been there, so you can tell us everything you’ve seen and done there.
Scallywag 2: What is the cop 27? What country had the most people coming? And who has been there?
COP27 is a meeting of almost every country in the world to talk about how to work together to reduce climate change. There are thousands of attendees, some are from the governments of the countries and other people attend to share information or add their voices to the conversations.
I don't know which country sent the most people from their government but I am sure it was one of the big rich countries which have a lot of people working in the government. Probably it will have been the US, China or India.
The negotiations at COP meetings are very complicated and to play a full part it is necessary to send lots of government people so that they can join lots of different conversations at the same time. This is a big problem for the poorest countries who can not afford to send so many government people, because flights and hotels are expensive for people from poorer countries.
Some of the non-government people who go to COP are there because they want to help the governments from the poor countries. Another solution is that countries form alliances, and they negotiate in groups of governments so that the group can be in all the conversations even if each of the countries doesn't have enough people to do that. There are lots of different negotiation groups. For example there are the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and many others. The European Union (EU) can also be considered a negotiation group with 27 member countries. The UK is feeling a bit lonely right now because it is no longer in the EU group and has not joined any other negotiation groups. On the whole the UK still has the same kind of ideas about climate change as the other European countries.
Scallywag 1: People from all over the world came to Egypt to discuss about what their governments can do to improve the climate conditions.
Scallywag 2: Why did the cop 27 happened? Who had the idea of the cop 27?
COP27 stands for Conference of the Parties. A Party means a country that takes part in an international agreement to fight climate change which is called the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC for short). Almost every country in the world is a Party to this agreement. The Parties meet in Conference every year, and this was the 27th time. Countries take turns to be the Party who is hosting the UNFCCC Conference, it happened in the UK last year in Glasgow and next year it will happen in Dubai.
In 2015 the UNFCCC Parties created another agreement called the Paris Agreement. This contained a lot of good plans to take action. So now the COP meetings are spending their timing talking about whether that action is on track and how to make it happen in time.
Scallywag 2: What have you been doing there? What have you said, and what have other people said?
My job is about money and climate change, and how governments can make sure that money is spent in the right way.
At the COP Conferences governments spend a lot of their time talking about money. The poorer countries don't have enough money to fight climate change. They would like money from the rich countries, which is fair because it was the rich countries that created most of the greenhouse gases that have caused climate change. The rich countries do give money to the poor countries but so far this hasn't been enough to solve the problem. A few of the rich countries would prefer that things didn't change very fast, because their wealth comes from selling oil and gas and they are worried that fighting climate change means that they will become poor.
A lot of the money that is spent in the world belongs to private companies, not governments. Just like governments, some companies would like to do things that fight climate change and other companies prefer that things do not change so that they can keep making money. Governments can set rules for companies and make them change the way they spend and make their money. A lot of the work I do is encouraging countries to set these rules.
At COP27 the main thing I was doing was to talk about work that I have been doing to support the UK government to create a new type of rule. The new UK rule is that companies must create a 'transition plan' to explain how their company will change itself to meet climate change goals such as net zero emissions by 2050, and must tell everyone what this plan is. The UK is hoping that other countries will create similar rules. If they do then all companies will be expected to have plans for climate change, and to explain what they are. This means that companies will have to think about the problem, and will have to do things rather than only talking about doing things.
A lot of the other people talking about money were trying to find a solution to who should pay for problems caused by climate change, this is called 'loss and damage'. Poorer countries need help to pay for fixing the problems caused by climate change. At the end of the meeting it was agreed that richer countries will contribute money to help with this. But it was not agreed exactly who was going to pay this money, or how much it would be. Rich countries are not feeling all that rich right now, because of problems like the energy crisis caused by the invasion of Ukraine, so it was quite difficult to get them to agree to give anything more to poorer countries than they are already giving. Poor countries felt disappointed not to get a more detailed promise of help with loss and damage but they were pleased to get some kind of promise.
Scallywag 1: What is happening at the rain forest right now?
Most of the rainforest is in Brazil, and Brazil has a new leader called Lula. Lula came to COP27 and said that he was going to put a stop to a lot of the terrible deforestation that has been happening when the previous leader was in power. Lots of people were pleased to hear this.
Scallywag 2: What did the scientists say?
Athanasia: That might be extremely interesting.
There were quite a lot of scientists at COP27 sharing their latest results. Scientists are worried that climate change seems to be happening very fast and that greenhouse gas emissions are not going down yet. There as a lot of progress being made particularly in the area of renewable energy, and it looks as though humans are going to succeed in changing their economies and stopping greenhouse gas emissions - that's a really good thing. But the bad news is that so far this is not happening fast enough which means that the earth is still going to get too warm, and a lot of problems will be caused for a lot of people. We still need to fix this.
Scallywag 1: Did you find a solution to lower climate emissions?
I wish it was that simple! Lots of different things all need to happen. It was very inspiring to see such a lot of people all trying to do their best to find lots of different solutions that can add up to one big change.
Scallywag 2: How have you been feeling?
I have mostly been feeling a bit tired. I was happy with the work I did at COP27 on my area of work but it is also very exhausting to feel the size of the challenge. The first time I went to a UNFCCC Conference was in 2005, this was COP11 in Montreal. A lot of things have changed since then but a lot of things have stayed exactly the same.
Scallywag 2: Did you have a celebration afterwards?
No I came home and had a big sleep!
Thank you for your time!!!
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